


Siren Songs

by TheHufflebean (SevralShips)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Also there's a song in it!, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst, But less angst and trauma than usual, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Sailor Sirius, Self-Hatred, Shipwrecks, These tags make the fic seem a lot heavier than it is, Trauma, Vaguely set in the 1600s but don't fact-check anything, merman Remus, reference to drowning and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:29:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23039380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevralShips/pseuds/TheHufflebean
Summary: Sirius had heard of mermaids before, of course. They were all over the songs bards performed at his parents' table and the tall tales sailors traded in every port. He had never given much thought to whether or not the stories were true, though. Imagine his surprise when he and his best mates found themselves shipwrecked on an unfamiliar shore, with a breathtaking and mysterious merman for their only ally.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 208
Collections: Remus Lupin Fest 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It was such a treat making something for this wonderful fest! A huge thank you to the mods and my fellow creators! I've wanted an excuse to write a merman AU for ages and now I finally have!
> 
> Prompt 22: Merman Remus/sailor Sirius

_**~Six days until the full moon~** _

Sirius refused to worry about James.

He had only been gone for… well, Sirius couldn’t say with certainty how long it had been, but judging by the angle of the sun, it had not yet been two hours. And James was more than capable of handling himself. Besides, it wasn’t even as though he’d gone alone; he had Peter with him.

Sirius shifted against the sand, feeling utterly useless. He tried to see if his leg could take his weight yet, biting back a cry at the vivid bolt of pain that shot up from his ankle. This was _bollocks_. He ought to be with his friends, being useful, not sitting here like an invalid. _Well, that’s what you are_ , the oft-quiet voice of reason in his head pointed out and he glared. He couldn’t glare at a voice in his head, so he glared instead at the sun, at his traitorously injured ankle, at the wreckage of their ship.

The glare faltered as he took in the sight of the mast, snapped like a twig, the tattered jibs and sails, the beaten and battered hull. _The Marauder_ had been the world’s finest thing, their pride and joy. She had been the most beautiful sight Sirius had ever seen, a true home made for adventuring, sleeping no two nights in the same port, riding the waves as gracefully and powerfully as a horse could gallop over land. 

But she’d gallop — _sail_ — no more, and if he’d let it, Sirius’ heart would break for her.

But he _wouldn’t_ let it, _couldn’t let it._ They were in quite a predicament and he couldn’t afford to waste tears over a pile of wood and linen sailcloth. If he was going to weep, it ought to be for the half a dozen men who had been thrown overboard in the night’s catastrophe. His eyes were too dry for weeping, though, for either ship or crew, and therein lay their most pressing concern. 

_Water_. 

It was the most painfully ironic thing to be in need of as he stared out at the sea, so placid now, lapping happily at the sand a mere few meters away. It was like a cat innocently licking its paw as though it had not just knocked down something fragile and irreplaceable. Sirius’ gaze slid from sea to sky. Surely, too, the sky had poured down enough water last night to have sustained them for days, but it wasn’t as if they had been thinking of _gathering rainwater_ as they fought to keep the poor _Marauder_ afloat amidst the screaming squall. Sirius wet his dry lips and tried to ignore his thirst.

He tried to be grateful, as James had done. _Mate,_ James had grinned _, we’re not drowned, don’t look so dour!_ Optimism always came so easily to James,though. And much as Sirius failed to join him in it at present, it was one of the dearest qualities to his best friend’s name. To James, everything was just another adventure, ill fate only another hurdle over which to clamber. When he and Pete had picked through _the Marauder’_ s hold and found the last kegs of grog smashed, Peter had grown skittish round the eyes and Sirius had felt the grim sinking reality that he was going to _die_ here, but determination had only straightened James’ spine as he declared confidently that seeking water was their new mission.

James thought he was the captain. He _wasn’t_ , not really, but no one had ever bothered to relieve him of the notion. It was James’ money (or rather, his _parents’_ money) that had paid for the ship, and everyone who stepped on board loved him (as everyone who encountered James was bound to do sooner or later), and seeing as his cheer was more buoyant than _the Marauder_ herself, there was hardly a better candidate to lead. If James felt any guilt about captaining a ship that had been wrecked, or for not going down with said ship, there had been nothing in his demeanor to show it. He and Peter had gathered together what supplies they could, he had dragged Sirius into the shade (which had receded all too fast), clapped him on the shoulder, and then disappeared beyond the treeline in search of water, or people, or whatever there was here to find.

They didn’t know where exactly _here_ was, after all. Sirius could not say for sure how far they had been from their next port when the storm had befallen them. With any luck the fierce winds had merely drove them onto the coast a ways away from their destination, and not on some useless little island with no water or civilization of which to speak. Sirius’ eyes stung — surely just from the sand, of course, and from the salt, perhaps a _little_ from the pain in his leg, or from glaring up at the sun too long, nothing else — and he blinked them a few times impatiently, drawing his gaze back to the water.

Sirius’ heart stuttered in his chest. _There was someone in the water_! Sirius squinted, trying to identify what he was seeing. It _might_ just be some detritus, but… _no_ , Sirius could _swear_ he felt someone’s gaze upon him! He rubbed his eyes hard with his fists, hissing in discomfort as he inadvertently filled them with sand. When he had cleared them again, the bright after-image of the sun had dimmed a bit and there was no mistaking that it was _a person_ before him, “Oi!” he shouted, or rather _tried_ to shout, his voice coming hoarse from his dry throat, “Who goes there?”

Sirius blinked hard, trying to clear his hazy vision. He had expected to see one of the crew members he had thought lost in the storm, but he did not recognize the stranger in the water. And they were not someone he would have soon forgotten. He couldn’t see them very well, but surely he would have remembered such long hair, such gleamingly white skin. No, whoever they were, they had not been aboard _the Marauder_ ; no sailor’s skin could remain so fair, as though it had seldom been touched by the sun. 

Sirius knew that much for certain; his own skin had once been pale as ivory, after all, but it had burned dreadfully in those first weeks and after long months of seafaring had burnished into a freckled gold. James had teased him mercilessly when he’d caught him examining his reflection in his dagger, accused him of vainly bemoaning the loss of his perfect high-born skin. Sirius had cuffed him ‘round the ear and laughed along with him, but in truth James couldn’t have been more wrong. It was exactly the opposite. Sirius _loved_ the change in his own body, loved to count the new freckles on the backs of his hands, the new hard strength of his muscles, the callouses on his palms; he loved the salt smell that had replaced cologne; he loved to leave his once-coiffed hair in wild abandon; he loved even the delicate curls of skin that flaked from the bridge of his sunburnt nose. He relished the knowledge that he could never again have fit in at court, his outside finally reflecting how different, _how real_ he had always been on the inside, so unlike the simpering lily-whiteness of his noble peers. He loved most of all to think of how his own parents would like as not be unable to recognize him with his browned skin and humble clothes; he no longer bore any resemblance to the rigid figures in the elegant family portraits that adorned their estate's stifling walls.

The stranger in the water had not answered Sirius’ question, but they seemed to have moved further from shore. _Fuck_ , Sirius thought vehemently to himself as he gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright. His head swam with the pain from his ankle, but he couldn’t very well sit here while the poor bastard was dragged to a watery grave! Sirius tried to put as little weight as possible on his bad leg, managing a grand total of three strides before it gave out and he fell to his knees, hands hitting the sand just fast enough to protect his face, if not quite his dignity.

“You are hurt,” an unfamiliar voice said, and it wasn’t a question. He sounded like a man, but not like any man Sirius had ever met. He spoke slowly, in an oddly musical way, the vowels sounding more rounded with air.

“Well spotted,” Sirius remarked, the pain making his tone sharper than he intended. He remained on his hands and knees but looked up at the man, eyes widening in surprise to see him _much_ nearer than he had been. How in God’s name had he swam that fast without making a single splash?

The man smiled and Sirius’ fingers curled into the sand to behold such beauty. The man’s lips quirked into a crooked smile and it was as if that were the shape nature had intended them to hold. His face was a marvel; a high forehead and sensitive brows of dark gold, the lines of jaw and cheekbone and nose all formed with the very delicacy of a seashell . His eyelids reminded Sirius of seashells, too, a translucent, nearly pearlescent, pink, curved with grace over very large eyes of golden-green. The long hair that cascaded in waves around his shoulders was like antique gold in hue, and must be an even more beautiful sight when dry.

Sirius realized he was gaping and forced himself to balance on his knees, wincing as the movement jostled his ankle, “I should like to help you,” the man said, in that strange voice like wind through reeds.

Sirius snorted, “And here _I_ thought to be the one helping _you_ ,”

The man’s smile widened, his lips parting as it grew into something warmer, a smile of honest pleasure, “You are kind,” he said, and Sirius’ eyes caught on the brief flash of his teeth. The warm smile shrank slightly and the beautiful man _glided_ a bit closer, “I do not wish to frighten you,” he admitted, his voice lower, almost apologetic.

One of Sirius’ eyebrows shot up, “Frighten me?” he said, astonished that this stranger had the _gall_ to think he was so easily cowed, “Not going to happen.”

A small crease formed between the man’s brows, “You are bold,” he observed plainly.

Sirius laughed, though it hurt the dryness of his throat, “As are you, stranger,” he pointed out, “Claiming that you can help me, _or frighten me_ , when the sea has stolen the clothes off your very back!” Sirius frowned at the peculiarity of it, noticing it only as he heard himself say it aloud, “Why are you so _calm_? Naked in the sea in the middle of God-knows-where, talking to—” Sirius’ words were interrupted when the man moved his hand and an unnatural wave rose up at his side, then swept almost _obediently_ over the sand and _engulfed_ Sirius. Before he could even panic, he found himself in the water beside the man. One of his arms wrapped Sirius’ lower back, balancing his weight effortlessly in that hold. Sirius blinked up at the man, struggling to speak. He was _so much_ more beautiful up close, a beauty that, it occurred to Sirius belatedly, was somewhat _unearthly_ , “How,” he stammered, “How did you do that?”

“The water and I belong to one another,” the man replied, as if that explained everything, “We help one another when we can, as you and your own friends do, I imagine.”

“My friends,” Sirius repeated, hearing the spike of anxiety in his voice. The more he looked at the man, the more it dawned on him that he wasn’t a _man_ at all. The teeth in his entrancing smile were sharp and numerous, the fingers that rested on Sirius’ knee were _webbed_ , and Sirius felt sure that if he looked down, he would not spy legs beneath the water. Without bothering to check, he thrashed, freeing himself easily from the man’s loose grip, his ankle screaming out as he kicked, trying not to slip under the water. He had assumed it was shallow enough to stand by the way the stranger was submerged only to his ribs; as it turned out, it was deeper than Sirius’ height.

“You said you would not be frightened!” the man said, a note of concern entering his voice as Sirius splashed, “Please, be still, you will make your hurt worse!”

“Who _are_ you?” Sirius demanded, spitting out seawater that scalded his thirsty tongue with its salt, “How did you _do_ that with the water? What did you do to my friends?!”

“I did no harm to your friends,” the man assured, his webbed hands resting on the water’s surface palm-up, “I merely saw them, where the clear water meets the brine,” Sirius felt a measure of relief to hear that James and Peter had indeed found drinking water, but it didn’t help his current predicament, and it definitely did not answer his other questions, “My name is Remus,” the man said, as if hearing Sirius’ thought, “I’m a merman.”

“A _merman_?” Sirius repeated incredulously, as if he hadn’t been suspecting that this Remus might not entirely human, “Bollocks, that’s just a _legend—”_

The golden-green eyes rolled impatiently and beside Remus, a _tail_ parted the water’s surface. It had scales the color of old copper, in some places gleaming iridescent-bright, in other places patina green. The end fanned out, resting on the water as weightless as silk.

“Impossible,” Sirius said, gesturing a hand at the proof undulating gracefully directly before him.

“ _Stubborn_ ,” Remus countered, gesturing a hand towards Sirius. He went on a little more quickly, “My people have great gifts in mending wounds, if you would only—”

He reached for Sirius, but Sirius pushed against the water with his palm, splashing Remus’ face, desperate for a diversion, “Don’t—” 

Remus did not so much as flinch at being splashed, “If I meant you harm,” he said matter-of-factly and perhaps a little exasperated, “I could have drowned you thrice by now.” A combination of fear and surprise at the brutal logic of the words had Sirius’ protests shriveling up before they could reach his mouth. This time when Remus reached for him, he did not flinch away, though he did bristle slightly as one hand braced his back.

“W-why?” Sirius cleared his throat, embarrassed by the quaver in his voice, “Why would you want to help me?”

Remus’ lambent eyes narrowed slightly as they searched Sirius’, “Humans are strange,” he finally said, after a long pause, “Is kindness for its own sake not reason enough?”

Sirius felt abashed at that, feeling it nearly as a reprimand despite the softness of Remus’ tone. Nevertheless, when Remus’ other hand found his knee again and slid down his leg, sending a heated shiver up Sirius’ spine, he found himself asking, “You w-won’t ask anything of me in return?”

Remus’ eyes flashed up to Sirius’ for a second before lowering back to his swollen ankle, shaking his head, “Need all things be transactions, little human?”

Sirius opened his mouth to defend himself. A _little_ human he was not and no one had addressed him so condescendingly since his sixteenth summer when he’d grown a head taller than any other man at court. Before he could educate Remus in the fact that he was not in fact a _little_ human but a tall and strapping one, Remus’ hand had wrapped loosely around his ankle and the bizarre sensation made him forget how offended he was. It was not _painful_ , but it was not comfortable, an eerie invasive feeling as if small tendrils were prodding gently at the sensitive tissue, curling around the little bones there. Sirius had not closed his mouth and so had no hope of stopping the whimper that escaped him when he felt a _tug_ and a sick _click_ as if his ankle were a lock into which Remus had just twisted a key.

At the sound of Sirius’ whimper, Remus looked back at his face with something like alarm, “Hurt?” he asked, directly, and Sirius couldn’t help wondering how the fellow could go back and forth between sounding like a sage elder and a guileless child. Sirius shook his head and for some mad reason when Remus released him, he felt the loss of contact acutely. When he began to tread water, there was no longer any pain from his ankle at the water’s resistance; in fact there was no pain at all. _Magic,_ he thought, peering down at it through the water, and his astonishment must have shown in his expression, because Remus made a sound. Looking back at him, Sirius realized that the noise like a flute-trill had been a laugh, the merman grinning his sharp-toothed grin, “Silly human,” he said, not unkindly, “Did you think I meant to deceive you? To turn it perhaps into a tail?” to punctuate the point, he rippled his tail out of the water again.

Sirius’ eyes grew round, “You could do that?” he asked.

Remus canted his head to the side, “Of course,” he said, as if it were a trifle to transform the features of a body, “Healing is not our only gift.”

Sirius wanted to ask Remus about his other gifts. His fear of the merman had shifted to abject awe. A broken ankle was not a minor injury, indeed better men than Sirius had lost legs to the bonesaw, or even their _lives_ when just such an injury had soured. And the merman, asking nothing in return, had healed it with such ease as one might push a button through a buttonhole! But before Sirius could find the words to ask even one of the questions sprouting in his mind, his attention was drawn to the shore by the sound of James’ voice.

“Ahoy!” he called as he and Peter emerged from the trees, eyes glued to the spot where he had left Sirius. Even from a short ways away, Sirius could see the rare flicker of fear cross his friend’s feature at not finding him there.

“In here!” Sirius called, James’ eyes snapping to him immediately.

“What are you—?” his gaze found Remus, “Who the bloody hell is that?”

“Remus,” Sirius called back, “A merman who just healed my God-forsaken leg!”

“Human…” Remus cautioned beside him, sinking down so that the water came up to his shoulders.

“A _what?_ ” James said delightedly, at the same instant that Sirius caught Remus’ eyes and said softly, “Sirius.”

“Serious, indeed,” Remus said in something almost a scoff, his eyes sliding warily to James, “Humans do not—”

“No, my name,” Sirius interrupted, “It’s Sirius,” one corner of Remus’ mouth twitched up even as his expression remained worried, “And James is one of the good humans, I swear on my life. A far better human than me, as a matter of fact.”

“Stop whispering to your merman,” James called, cocking his head slightly. He was grinning, appearing curious but otherwise unfazed, “We’ve found water!” he held up a presumably full canteen.

“Does your merman know where we might find something to _eat?_ ” Peter asked, as unfazed as James. Riding the high seas with them, he had learned to roll with the punches.

“He’s not _my_ —” Sirius said, his words faltering as another of Remus’ waves deposited him back on land, “ _Merman,”_ he finished.

“Yes,” Remus said, not bothering to correct James or Peter on the matter of ownership. There was a hesitance to his voice as he eyed the two newcomers a bit suspiciously, but his voice was sincere as he said again, “I should like to help.”

James laughed and emulated Remus’ tone good-naturedly, with a small bow, “Splendid! I should like to be helped!” as he pulled Sirius to his feet bodily and thrust the canteen into his hands.

~~~

The humans were strange, but Remus found himself irresistibly drawn to them. They were so _different_ than that which lived beneath the water. They moved so _fast_ , were so _loud_ , so _heavy_ and yet so unaware of the way the land tugged at their own weight. He knew well what a danger humans could be, that he would be wise to protect himself, and yet… these humans seemed more in need of protection than he. They reminded him almost of fish caught haplessly in one of those great nets, swimming hard and not noticing the helplessness of their own predicament. The one called James was a particular example. Remus would never have known from his unburdened laugh that he had been shipwrecked upon an unfamiliar shore.

The humans had made an attempt at helping, first, when he had shown them the waters rich with fish that they could eat. Without the tools to which they were accustomed, though, their fish-catching was abysmal. When the one called Sirius had grown agitated, swearing as only a sailor could and casting down his sharpened reed in frustration, Remus had taken pity on them. It was nothing to him, after all, to catch some fish, and he suspected that a full belly might get the one called Sirius to smile again.

He had been right. That had been worth many more fish than he had ever caught in all his years.

Remus frowned privately; why did it matter to him so much to see the human called Sirius _smile_? Yes, he was beautiful, in the reckless, graceless, impatient way of land-things. But Remus was surrounded by beauty always, the sun glinting off scales, the current persuading the kelp to dance, the sunrise and sunset colors painting a wash of hues through the depths. Perhaps he had grown blind to that beauty, after so long alone in it, perhaps he was going mad.

Still, whatever the reason, he wanted the beautiful human to smile. That was why he presently was catching for the humans more fish, snapping their spines for quick mercy with a practiced flick. He carried a fragment of their sundered ship’s sail, two ends knotted to form a parcel, and he slipped the unlucky fish into this to join the others he had gathered. 

When he deemed the parcel to be loaded well with fish, he swam to the spot where he could reach the fruit from the water, and filled the parcel with those until it was fit to burst. Remus did not know if the humans had ever seen such fruit, or if they had a name for it, but he knew it was sweet and that a human needed more than fish to live and be well. And for some reason, he wanted very much for them to be well.

As Remus swam back to the cave where the humans were passing the night, he reminded himself that he did not need to feel such responsibility for them. He had done more than enough for them already, far more, in fact, than was in his nature to do. _His nature_ , he scowled disdainfully to himself. His _nature_ would have had him drag the beautiful human to the ocean floor, where his hurt leg would have been the least of his concerns. 

_I am more than my nature_ , he reminded himself firmly, as he swam through the mouth of the cave and broke the water’s surface. The humans’ scent was strong on the air and the instant it greeted him it made his teeth ache. It made an utter hypocrite of him, is what it did. How could he claim to be anything more than his nature, how could anyone? It was nature that had made him, made everyone, and ultimately, nature always won out. 

The humans’ fire had gone out, but there was still ample light in the cave by which to see. Remus did not have to note its illumination, did not have to look up into the sky behind him, to know that the moon was high and nearly-ripe. He could feel it dragging at his bones just as it dragged at the tide, willing him, urging him to his nature in its waxing. _The water and I belong to one another,_ that’s what he had told the human called Sirius, and in this sense it was true, both himself and the water following that inexorable celestial pull. But if he was honest with himself, it was not the water he belonged to, but the moon.

It was some grim joke that the human called Sirius should look so lovely in the light of the same moon. He, like his friends, had laid down to sleep upon the sand to sleep. Remus’ gaze flickered over the one called Peter and the one called James for only a moment, but lingered long upon the one called Sirius. He was different in his sleep. Awake, there was a frenetic quality to him, movement always in his restless hands and mobile mouth and the hair that the sea-wind was always blowing. His eyes being closed made him seem nearly like a different individual, the zest and activity of that gaze, which flashed with some inward mystery, being absent. There was a vulnerable softness to his features, lips parted and face in repose, that made Remus realize the human might be younger than he had first suspected. It was hard to know the ages of land-things. 

He did not know how long he stared at the human call— _at Sirius._ He admired the long lines of his body, the way his legs sprawled across the sand with an odd human grace. Remus tried to imagine his own body ending in two long legs like that, tried to imagine balancing his weight in the out-of-water heaviness on two feet, and was a little surprised to find himself somewhat impressed. It might not _look_ like the gliding grace of movement underwater, but surely there was more finesse in it.

Remus could not focus on Sirius’ legs for long, though, his eyes drawn back time and again to the human’s sleeping face. One of these times, when his gaze drifted back, he found Sirius looking back at him. He startled, the water around him splashing slightly, as Sirius blinked a few times and squinted. “Remus?” he said, after a moment. His voice — which was richer and more resonant than any Remus had ever heard — was thick of sleep and just above a whisper, “Please tell me that’s you,” he said, his hand making no sound as it left the sand in front of his face to draw the dagger at his belt.

“It is me,” Remus said, realizing that the moonlight that filtered into the cave must not be enough to guide the human’s eyes, which landed on him as he spoke but seemed still to gaze through him, “You do not need that.”

Sirius slipped the dagger back into its sheath and an expression of something that may have been embarrassment crossed his features. Remus felt lucky to see it, sure that fully awake in broad daylight it would not have looked so, “Pardon me,” he said, and blinked a few more times before propping his head up on his other hand and squinting in Remus’ general direction again, “I can hardly see in here, I just felt something watching me.”

It was Remus’ turn to look embarrassed, though he was lucky again in that Sirius could not see it, “Pardon _me_ ,” Remus said, the phrase not quite familiar to him, “I did not wish to disturb you, only to bring more food.”

Sirius smiled. Oh, and it was worth it. Worth catching every fish in the sea, worth picking every fruit that hung from the trees. Worth embarrassment ten hundred times. The human’s smile was beauty as Remus had never even dreamed it, his golden face opening up like the first brilliant spill of sunrise over the sea, “Why, Remus,” Sirius said, and the sly way his smiling lips made Remus’ name sound was magic, “Are you trying to fatten us up before you eat us?”

All the warmth that had been blooming so unfamiliarly behind Remus’ ribs curdled, “No!” he gasped out, pulling back from the human, his voice little more than a hiss of wind, “ _No!_ ”

“Remus,” Sirius said, sitting up now and holding out one hand, unwebbed fingers spread towards Remus as his smile wilted, “I was jesting, I didn’t mean it.”

“O-oh,” was all Remus managed to say, depositing the parcel of food in the cold wet sand where it would not soon spoil. Sirius spoke his name again, and he made it sound very lovely, but Remus did not respond, ducking back under the water. Its pressure and lightness closed in around him reassuringly and it took only one swish of his strong tail to see him out of the cave and away from the humans who trusted him far more than his nature warranted. 

Out below the open water, the moonlight was brighter and inescapable and so Remus made no real attempt to escape it. He felt the hungry, longing pull of it sucking at him and shuddered. He could not escape it, no, but he would not embrace it, and it left him a lonely half-thing. Sometimes he longed for the companionship of his own kind, longed for the days he had joined them in rocky coves and stormy waters and lived by hunger. 

He swam deeper, feeling the pressure tighten around him like an embrace. That feeling was comfort, it was home, relaxing in its quiet, its cool dimness, so abidingly beautifully blue in every direction. _I want to share it with him_ , he thought desperately, unbidden, the old frustrated confusion swelling up in him. It had never been all hunger for him, but a yearning he could not explain, a yearning to share, and to show, a need that in its own satisfaction would foil its very want. 

Remus swam deeper still and swore to the waves that belonged to the same cruel mistress as he that he would not approach the humans again.

_**~Five days until the full moon~** _

Sirius didn’t manage to sleep again that night. He waited for a long time after the merman’s hasty departure, watching after him despite hardly being able to make out the ripples left by his tail as they gave way again to stillness. _Halfwit_ , scolded a voice in Sirius’ head that bore an unpleasant resemblance to his mother’s. He had always had a habit of lodging his foot in his mouth by way of thoughtless jokes, and apparently that failing didn’t only apply at court. Sirius ran over his words in his head again and again, trying to figure out what he’d said to scare Remus away.

_Do mermen eat people?_ Sirius asked himself, staring up at the stony ceiling of the cave, the stalactites gradually becoming visible as the sky outside began to lighten. He tried to recall what he’d heard about mermen, although admittedly they had always been mer _maids_ in the songs and tales. It stood to reason that merpeople would all eat the same diet, though, and he couldn’t recall any ballads that described merpeople finding human flesh particularly tasty. There were some stories wherein merpeople led sailors to their doom, luring them to wreck their ships on rocks or tempting them down into the surf where they would drown. Maybe the songs didn’t tell the stories in their entirety, maybe down at the bottom of the sea, the drowned sailor was feasted upon. Sirius was no expert.

But there were other stories, too, stories of merpeople who were lonely, or lovesick, or longed for more than their sodden lives beneath the waves. Sirius could remember a minstrel at court who used to sing such a song, about a woeful mermaid who pined after her human love ashore. It had always brought tears to Sirius’ eyes that he had had to fight not to shed in sight of his peers. His experience with love had not been nearly so romantic, the servants’ stairs and gulf in class that separated him and Caradoc had been as insurmountable but not nearly as poetic as the mermaid’s ‘ _deep deep salt-sea’._ It had not been about Caradoc to him, though. No, it had struck a chord far deeper in him; the heartsick longing of the mermaid in the song had felt as though it were his very own; wishing with every fiber of his being that he were someone else, somewhere else, with the freedom to strive towards that which called to his soul. 

Surely, it was an assumption, and one borne of Sirius’ own sympathies, but that yearning mermaid sounded more like Remus than the ones that deceived sailors unto their deaths. After all, if he meant to kill them he was doing a rather poor job of it. There was a good chance James, Peter, and himself might have languished on this beach until death claimed them, had it not been for Remus’ intervention. Sirius’ mind filled with the image of Remus the day before, his beauty in the water unfathomable, and around him nothing but waves upon empty waves. He had looked so starkly _alone_ , his body the only thing disrupting the long curve of the horizon for many leagues around.

So, no, Sirius had to reason that Remus neither deceived nor _ate_ people, but he had certainly taken some sort of offense at Sirius’ flippant joke. A memory came to him, suddenly, of the day a few years prior, when James had swatted him round the head and explained through gritted teeth why he ought not to make jokes that traded on the darkness of James’ — or anyone else’s — skin. He cringed to recall how he had pointed out that James was different, because his parents, who had been affluent merchants, had risen above the rank of others who shared the color of their skin. It had taken him embarrassingly long to quit making excuses and bother to _understand_ that even if a joke might have sounded to him harmless and might have ruffled no feathers among the lily-white ranks of his peers, that did not in truth, mean that it was doing no harm. He’d come to understand a great deal more about the world since then, beyond the narrow and unvaried world that his parents inhabited, but he hated to look back on the tactless son of privilege he had been then.

Or perhaps still was? He wondered if perhaps it was like that with Remus; were there hurtful assumptions that humans made about merpeople, and had he accidentally fumbled his way into one? That surely sounded like something he would do.

“Is your merman about, mate?” Sirius was pulled from his thoughts by James’ groggy voice. While he’d been lost in thought, the sun had risen and morning daylight was now pouring in the mouth of the cave. Peter was still asleep, but James was awake and looking at him expectantly.

“He’s not _mine_ ,” Sirius pointed out, as he already had had to do numerous times. James had grinned to see his annoyance every time the day before, but this time he frowned. He simply knew Sirius too damn well, and something in his demeanor had given him away.

“What is it?” James asked, direct as ever, “You’re obviously troubled. Why?”

“Oh, I dunno, Jamie,” Sirius snipped, throwing up his hands, “Maybe because we’re shipwrecked who knows where and our crew—”

“That’s not it,” James interrupted, searching Sirius’ face as if the answer would be written there for him.

“How do you—?” Sirius began.

“Did you quarrel with your merman?” James asked, so astutely that Sirius couldn’t hope to deny it.

“He’s _not mine_!” Sirius insisted, covering his face with his hands, “But, yes. I reckon I said the wrong thing.”

“Aye, that sounds like you,” James said, not unkindly, laying a consoling hand on Sirius’ shoulder, “He’ll be back, don’t fret.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Sirius demanded, shrugging James’ hand off in his perturbation.

“Oh, who could stay away?” James said, very seriously, “We’re loads more interesting than a sea full of fish!”

“Oh,” Sirius said, recalling the reason Remus had given for his nighttime visit in the first place, prompting the statement that Sirius now suspected had driven him away. He leaned over to the edge of the water, quickly locating a bundle of sailcloth, “He brought us more food, by the by.”

“Please, mate,” James said, patting his shoulder again, “Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding us, alright?”

Sirius grumbled acquiencense, but it must have been good enough for James because he set to re-building their fire. Sirius set about cleaning the fish. However, when he had the first one cut open and glimpsed the soft pink guts beneath the iridescent silver scales, he felt his gorge rise suddenly. He couldn’t help thinking of Remus; did he think that Sirius saw him the same as a mere fish now, or worse, some sort of sea monster? Perish the thought, when in fact he’d never encountered anyone as stunning as Remus in all his life! James gave him a skeptical look when he begged him to switch tasks, but obliged him all the same.

Food was a welcome distraction, and though Sirius would have denied it, it did lift his spirits a bit. With Pete and James joking along as they ever had, Sirius could almost forget their circumstances. They stashed what remained of their food back in the cold sand and gathered their fruit skins and fish bones, wading through the water up to their waists to leave the cave. 

The sun didn’t shine that day as brilliantly as it had the day before. The sky was largely enshrouded by clouds, though it did not look like rain. James led the way, head held high as ever, as they traipsed their way back to _the Marauder_. Sirius grimaced as she came into view. She was a bloody sorry sight, worse to behold in fresh daylight than he had held in his memory.

“Alright, men,” James declared in his _captain voice_ , “We haven’t the access to ordinary tools so we’re going to have to rely on our ingenuity to get the dear girl seaworthy again!”

“Are you sure, James?” Peter asked, eyeing the ship’s remains doubtfully.

“Pete has a point,” Sirius chimed in, the other man looking relieved to be agreed with, “I don’t believe there’s enough ingenuity in the world.”

“Come along, men,” James said, “Are you forgetting we’re Marauders? There’s no scrape we can’t get out of!” He thumped his fist lightly against the ship’s hull for emphasis, impressively managing not to wince at the sound of wood creaking and something collapsing with a clatter within.

“We’re Marauders forever,” Peter echoed emphatically, glancing at Sirius.

“But she’s not,” Sirius finished, gesturing at the ship.

James’ face fell. For all that he may be the de-facto captain, he had never been one to go against the wishes of his crew, “Well, alright,” he said, sagging to lean against the ship, “Have you any proposals then? Like as not, we aren’t even far from Godric’s Cove.”

“Shame we’ve no way of know—” Sirius began, but his words died in his throat at the sound of a peculiar voice behind him.

“The place called Godric’s Cove is near,” Sirius’ head turned so fast his neck gave a small _crack_ , freeing some of the tightness from sleeping on the sand. A relieved sigh faltered in his throat at the sight of Remus so very near. He was in the water where it was shallow enough to sit, his tail folded and curled around him in a way that reminded Sirius a bit of a cat. Heaven help him, there had never been any sight more beautiful. Even in the muted cloudy light, Remus shone, the scales of his gracefully curled tail refracting the light in shimmers of copper, and blue, and green, his skin pale and luminous as a pearl. His eyes looked straight past Sirius, however, trained instead on James. The merman’s beautiful face was still so new to him, and yet, he could recognize the expression of forced calm indifference on it all the same.

“There he is!” James crowed in unaffected glee, “Our guide and benefactor, merman of the hour!”

“Hello, James,” Remus replied, the flicker of a real smile threatening the calm of his face.

“Hello, Remus!” James bounded over to the water, plopping down to sit in the sand less than a meter from Remus, “You said we’re near Godric’s Cove?”

“Yes,” Remus said, lifting one webbed hand to gesture along the line of the shore stretching to his left, “Had the storm not befallen your ship, you would have reached that place within two days.”

“Two days?” Peter repeated, eyes wide at the poor luck of it.

“That’s not long to sail at all,” James said, his eyes drifting back to _the Marauder_ , “I reckon she could stay afloat that long.”

Sirius opened his mouth to remind James that they had moved on from that fantasy, but Remus spoke first, “That would not be wise,” he said, unapologetic at his directness, “You would reach your destination safer by land.”

“By land?” Peter said, looking a little queasy at the suggestion. He had a poor sense of direction, and Sirius couldn’t blame him.

“The clear-water flows into the place called Godric’s Cove,” Remus said, “Following it would lead you to that place.”

“The river?” James asked. Remus confirmed as much and James laughed out triumphantly, clapping Remus on the shoulder and appearing not to notice the way the merman went rigid at the unexpected contact, “Bloody brilliant!” he proclaimed, and the optimistic glint was back in his eyes, the _captain_ ly tone back in his voice, “ _The Marauder_ shall live on; we’ll use her noble wood to build a raft! And we’ll reach Godric’s Cove by way of the river instead of a sea, with a tale they’ll be telling when our grandchildren are old!”

Happy for the advent of a solution, and for an immediate goal, Peter set to prying up the more intact boards from _The Marauder’_ s hull. James grinned at his enthusiasm, clambered out of the sand, shot Remus a thankful wink, and joined in Peter’s efforts. Sirius took a step towards the ship, but the thought of tearing her apart turned his stomach so badly he was sure that he would bring up the fish and fruit with which he’d broken his fast. He staggered down the beach a ways, surprised by the force of his own dismay. Sirius worked to regain control of his breathing, but it proved difficult, what with the sounds of wood creaking and breaking behind him, James and Peter raising their voices in a bawdy shanty as if the task before them were no different than any other day’s work.

“Are you…” Sirius spun at the rounded sound of Remus’ voice, surprised to find that the merman had followed him, “Hurt?” he seemed uncertain of the last word’s adequacy, but to Sirius’ surprise, it rang true to the ache in his chest.

“Yes,” he said, then winced at his honesty and immediately backtracked, “ _No!_ No, I’m, er…” he dared a glance back at the ship, “It’s foolishness, that’s all.”

Remus blinked his large golden-green eyes, and tilted his head slightly, appearing quite unconvinced, “You are hurt for your ship?” he asked, his tone un-accusing and curious.

Sirius regarded him for a moment, allowing his eyes to linger briefly on the way his lips were pursed innocently, awaiting Sirius’ answer, “Yes,” he admitted finally, sitting down heavily upon the sand, “I know a ship is only a pile of wood, and it’s foolishness to feel sorrow over it, but,” he shrugged, tried to laugh it off, “I never claimed to be naught but a fool.”

“Sorrow,” Remus repeated, as if testing the taste of the word. Sirius wondered if he had heard it before. The earnest expression on the merman’s face was more than he could take and he looked down instead, picking up a fistful of sand and watching it trickle between his fingers. It surprised him when Remus spoke again, “I would not call it foolish.”

Sirius nearly lashed out, nearly spat a sharp ‘ _what do you know’_ at the merman, but he managed to bite it back, “No indeed?” he asked instead.

“No indeed,” Remus repeated, stretching out so that he could lay on his back on the water’s surface, the sight of him laid out weightless making Sirius’ mouth run dry, “A pile of wood your ship may be, but it carried you and held you,” he frowned up at the cloud-white sky, “I have never been in a ship, apology if I presume, but I should think it would come to be…” his words petered off, as if he did not know the right word to finish the thought.

“Home,” Sirius said, finishing it for him, “It came to be _home_.”

Remus turned to look at him and Sirius _saw_ it, saw his own yearning reflected back in the golden-green depths of those fathomless eyes. It was the yearning that the court minstrel had captured in the song of the heartsick mermaid that had once so moved him, but ten times again deeper and lonelier, “Home.” Remus repeated, tasting the word again. This time it did not seem to Sirius like the word was unknown to him, but rather that, as with himself, it was known deeply by the very virtue of its painful absence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice coming out stripped bare, caught off guard by how much it hurt to see someone else’s back bowed beneath a burden similar to his own. Remus’ brow furrowed, and Sirius remembered himself, “I-I mean…” he ran a hand through his salt-tangled hair, realizing that now that he’d gone and blurted out an apology, he might as well make it count, “For what I said earlier.”

Remus’ expression darkened, and Sirius had the sense of him _closing_ as if shutters had covered over the openness of only an instant before, “There is no need,” he said, unconvincingly, rolling off the surface of the water and sinking so that it covered everything below his chin.

“Don’t swim away again!” Sirius implored, tone almost frantic. Remus’ golden eyebrows lifted at that, “Really, I… it was only a jest. I’m afraid I’ve a habit of jesting and giving offense.”

Remus’ lips curved into a sad smile, his eyes scanning Sirius almost hungrily, as if searching for the truth, “Is that so?” he asked, tone unreadable.

Sirius nodded, returning Remus’ mirthless smile, “Not my finest quality,”

Remus considered this for a moment before saying, in a tone that seemed too light, “I do not mean you harm, little human,”

“I know that,” Sirius said, feeling heat rush to his cheeks at being addressed that way again.

“You need not be so contrite,” Remus said, after a long pause, a wicked smile Sirius had not witnessed before overtaking his features, “It makes the meat tough.” Sirius barked a laugh of surprise, and the sound must have drawn the attention of James and Peter because a moment later they were calling to him to stop idling with ‘his merman’ and help with the work, “Do not fret, Sirius,” Remus said, his tone softer now and filling Sirius’ name as beautifully as a sea-breeze filled a sail, “You will find home again, better than a pile of wood.”

Sirius smiled gratefully at Remus, his kind words a balm even if he couldn’t bring himself to believe them. He reluctantly stood, brushed the sand from his breeches, and went to help dismantle the only home he’d ever known.

~~~

It was with great interest that Remus watched the humans at their work. He had always been too cautious — too distrustful of them, and more to the point, too distrustful of himself — to ever have lingered by the docks in Godric’s Cove or any of the other little ports. He usually only saw seacrafts from below the water, when one their large shadows would pass over him and he would gaze up at their big bellies in frozen curiosity. Needless to say, he had never seen one being built. 

And perhaps _seacraft_ was a generous name for the raft which the humans built from the wood of their ruined ship. _Sirius’ home_ , he had come to think of it, though he knew humans loved to name things and surely the ship had had a more proper one than that. The raft was not a thing of beauty by any means, the pieces of wood curved to the contour of their first purpose and splintered at the ends. But when they set it in the water, it bobbed, cheerfully buoyant, even with all three humans aboard. Sirius had thrown his head back and laughed, the sunset colors catching in his dark tangle of hair and reflecting off the sweat sheen of his golden, dappled skin. And _that_ , oh, that had been a thing of beauty like Remus had never beheld.

Remus had not intended to spend the whole day watching the humans. On the contrary, he had sworn to himself that he would give them a wide berth following Sirius’ comment in the cave. The human had apologized, had called it a jest, but it still clung to Remus’ mind as stubbornly as a barnacle. Even if the beautiful human had meant it lightly, he had landed too close to the truth that tormented Remus. Remus had no intention of eating the humans, whether fattened up or lean, but he doubted they would trust him so if they knew the things that he had done, the things that it was in his very nature to do.

“Tell us, Remus,” the one called James said, pulling Remus from his thoughts, “Are all merfolk so _pensive_?” He bit into a fruit and chewed thoughtfully. They were still on the same stretch of beach as they had been all day, their newly-constructed raft beside the picked-clean skeletal beams of _Sirius’ home_. Remus blinked at James, who was easy enough to see by the light of the mocking moon and the fire that Sirius tended. Still he did not know the meaning of the question.

“Pensive?” he asked, rolling the sibilant syllables around in his mouth and feeling a little embarrassed, “What is pensive?”

“Oh, you know,” James said, around a cheek full of fruit, “All quiet and deep thinking and frowning.”

“Leave him alone, James,” Sirius said, a bit shortly, not lifting his eyes from the skewered fish he was cooking over the fire.

“I’m not bothering him!” James insisted to Sirius, before directing at Remus, “If I am, you can just tell me to shut it, mate.”

“No,” Remus said, thinking of his parents for the first time in a long time, thinking of those he had once called friends, “No, I should not say that merpeople are pensive. Pardon me,” he added, remembering the words he had heard Sirius use, “If I have seemed so.”

James laughed and shook his head emphatically, “Bugger that! You can brood to your heart’s delight, mate,” he insisted, jabbing a thumb at Sirius, “I’ve years of training with the temperamental sort.”

Sirius thwacked James on the back of the head and the one called Peter, who had been dozing by the fire, snickered drowsily but did not fully wake, “I’m not _temperamental_ ,” Sirius grumbled, and Remus could not help but smile at that. He had only known the human for two days and had already seen him in at least thrice as many moods. As if drawn by his smile, Sirius’ eyes left the fire and landed on Remus’ face, the eye contact causing his fins to curl under the water where he sat half-folded in the shallows, “What are they like, then?” Sirius asked. Remus blinked at him and he elaborated, “Merpeople. If they’re not pensive, what are they like?”

James rested his chin upon his bent knee, eager to hear a tale, but Remus saw him only at the corner of his sight, his eyes glued as usual to Sirius, “We…” Remus said, feeling overwhelmed by the task of summarizing his whole species. Surely he was a poor candidate for the task, unwelcome as he had become among his own kind. He considered the question, remembering with a sick twist to his gut the comradery and thrill of joining the others in song upon the rocks, the satisfaction of ships drifting towards them full of humans unable to resist, “We are not quiet,” he said, decisively.

“So, you’re unusual, then,” James said, his tone not a bit lacking in grace, but not unkind, “You don’t talk much.”

“James…” Sirius chastised lightly, forcing his eyes back to the fish and rotating them again.

“Merpeople do not talk much,” Remus corrected, though perhaps he might have been better off not explaining, “We sing.”

“Of course!” James smacked himself on the forehead with a laugh, “That’s what all the stories say!” He folded his other leg, wrapping his arms around them and grinning, “Will you sing for us?” he asked eagerly.

The question made Remus’ head fizz with temptation. When in the history of merpeople had a human ever presented himself so unquestioningly as that, _asking_ for a song? _He doesn’t know,_ Remus reminded himself, _he doesn’t know what it means._ The moon was so very near to full, the sucking pull of it urging Remus to give into his nature. It would be _so very easy_ to sing, to coax these trusting humans into the deep. He could see it with vivid clarity, how they would get to their feet with rapturous expressions, not bothering to brush the sand from their clothes, how they’d drift towards him with eyes full of need. 

Remus shut his eyes against the image, steeling himself. _No._ As alluring as it sounded, as it always sounded to see someone want to be nearer to him, to take someone into the tight blue womb of the sea, he _would not_. It might be home to him, but to them it was death. He had been alone for so long since he’d left his own kind, but he would not be a hypocrite. The cure to his loneliness and the cause of it could not be the same.

“Remus?” It was Sirius’ voice this time, and Remus wondered absently what a voice so rich sounded like in song. Surely fuller and more honest than any siren song.

“Shit,” James’ voice muttered, and there was a _thump_ , likely Sirius hitting James again, “I didn’t mean to offend him!”

“You did not offend,” Remus said, not opening his eyes quite yet. The blood was pulsing with the moon in his veins but it was quieting a little now. He did not want to lie to them, so he said, “Song is sacred to our kind. I have not sung… in many moons.”

“Oh,” James said, clearly still abashed just by his tone. And then a long silence fell.

After some time, Remus opened his eyes. The humans’ fire was smoldering low. James had followed the one called Peter’s example and was now reclined upon the sand, his chest rising and falling slowly, his deep breaths in time with the rhythm of the waves against the shore. Sirius was still awake, staring thoughtfully — pensively, perhaps — into the cooling red embers of the fire. One of the cooked fish was in his hands, mostly eaten and entirely forgotten.

“I am sorry,” Remus said, when he finally felt sure that his voice would come out as speech and not as a deadly song. The beautiful young man startled so violently that he dropped the fish in his hands, his eyes darting to Remus.

“No, I’m sorry,” Sirius said, with a wince at James’ slumbering form, “I suppose the giving-offense thing is not my flaw alone.”

“I have said,” Remus pointed out, “James gave no offense.”

“Yes, well,” Sirius cast his eyes back to the fire, “You could have fooled me,” Remus was trying to find the words to explain that _offense_ was not what he had been experiencing, but Sirius spoke again first, “Are you hungry?”

Remus blinked at him, every fiber of his being screaming a resounding _yes._ It was not sustenance he hungered for, though; he had eaten his fill of fish the previous night before gathering food for the humans and he did not need to eat as frequently as they did. Sirius lifted the last skewered fish from over the fire, holding it up in offering, “No,” Remus said, simply.

“It’s meant for you,” Sirius said, his voice softer, “I prepared one for us each.”

Remus’ face felt warm, “Oh,” he said, his eyes tracing the odd grace of Sirius’ dry hair, the way a wave of it had slipped free from where he had tied it out of his face. He couldn’t help imagining it under water, the sand and tangles loosening from it as it floated in a weightless cloud around Sirius’ golden face.

And then Sirius was moving, in that fast, jarring, decisive way of his, jouncing more suddenly than anything could move against the resistance of water all around. He grabbed the skewered fish and stepped over James and Peter, dropping to sit on the damp sand directly in front of Remus. Remus did not withdraw, though instinct told him to. A more powerful force even than instinct drew him into the stone-grey of Sirius’ eyes, bright and decisive in the moonlight, “Here,” he said, offering the fish. It smelled appealing, in an odd, _fire_ sort of way that was foreign to Remus, beyond its association to the human ports and ships that he had long tried to avoid. He could smell the warmth of Sirius’ blood, the sweat and odor of his unwashed body, the tang of his evident nervousness. He thrust the fish a little closer, offering a small reassuring smile, “It’s better than raw, go on.”

It was the smile that did it. Sirius was always beautiful, in every one of the temperamental moods that Remus had yet witnessed, but it was his smile that made Remus feel weak. It pulled him as helplessly as if he were caught on a hook. He accepted the fish, and Sirius’ fingers brushed against his hand briefly. They were very warm and rough, and Remus wanted to tangle them with his own, wanted, in a flash of unbidden desire, to put them in his mouth instead of the proffered fish. 

Remus looked down at the fish. The skin had burned and cracked, the split revealing soft whiteness within. It reminded Remus a bit too much of the scar that he knew he bore on his own tail, and even though he knew the human would not see it in the moonlight, he burrowed his tail against the sand self-consciously. He looked back up at Sirius only to find the human’s eyes still trained on him, the smile on his perfect lips gone slightly crooked with bemusement.

“Here,” Sirius said, reaching over to tap his first two fingers against the fish’s side where the body was widest, “The best part is just there.” His gaze flickered from Remus’ eyes down to the fish and back, before dropping to his lips. They parted of their own volition, Remus’ tongue darting out to wet them as if he’d be able to taste Sirius’ gaze. He watched Sirius’ eyes darken at that, and for the space of an instant thought his sharp teeth had frightened the human, but then Sirius was smiling again. The smile was different than the others Remus had seen, one side curling up into a devious smirk, “Alright, then,” he said, as if Remus had issued a challenge. The fish’s crisp skin yielded easily beneath Sirius’ fingers and he scooped up a morsel of white meat, his eyes on Remus’ mouth again as he offered it.

Remus blinked. Surely, the human was not offering what it seemed like he was offering. But his fingers were right in front of his mouth now and truthfully, he did not even entertain the option of declining. He opened his mouth and leaned slightly forward and Sirius’ hand was _right there_. He closed his lips around the fingers, watching the small muscles around Sirius’ mouth and eyes falter as he used his tongue to swipe the piece of fish from the rough skin. A small involuntary hum of pleasure rose from his throat at the taste of it, like nothing he’d ever experienced, wonderfully delicate and yet creamy and rich. And then Sirius’ fingers were gone, and his eyes too, cast down where the very edge of the water was making the knees of his breeches wet. His expression was impossible for Remus to read, cheeks dark, brow furrowed, bottom lip sucked into his own mouth.

“ _Wondrous_ ,” Remus sighed. His head seemed to fizz again but it was not temptation this time. Or perhaps it was temptation, but not the profane temptation of drowning, something headier and sweeter. Sirius glanced up at him and his eyes were bottomless, so much more bottomless than the sea.

A smile spread across his face again haltingly, “I told you true,” he said, his voice oddly shaky.

“You did,” Remus said, using his own fingers to scoop another small piece of meat from the fish and placing it in his mouth. Sirius’ eyes traced them as he withdrew them again from his lips, before he stood up with that land-thing abruptness of his and hurried back over to the fire and his friends, saying a bit breathlessly that he was going to his rest.

_Strange_ , Remus thought, as he relished eating every last bit of the cooked fish. How very strange humans were.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a song in this chapter! You can definitely enjoy/get the meaning without listening to it, but I also made a recording which will be linked in text at that scene (make sure to open in new tab or Ao3 may default to opening it in the tab where you're reading)! Disclaimer I'm an okay singer who has never done any audio editing before so apologies if it's cringey or unpleasant! The lyrics are original but the melody is lifted from the English folk song 'Queen of Hearts' which dates back to the 1600s.

_**~Four days until the full moon~** _

Remus lay on his belly in the shallow waters, watching despondently as the humans woke with the dawn and made preparations to leave the beach. They yawned and did not converse as they worked, squinting in the brightness of the sun glinting off the water. He watched as they gathered together what little of value they had salvaged from the wreckage of their ship or foraged with Remus’ help, and he could not help but curse himself. _Why_ , he bemoaned to himself, had he been so very helpful to them since their arrival? Had he not been, surely he would have been rewarded with at least another day or two of their company.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Remus was scolding himself for being so selfish, even in his innermost thoughts. It was _better_ for them to go now, before the moon grew any more insistent, before his fancies of seeing them underwater grew any harder to resist. The moon would not be at its fullest for a few nights yet, but as he watched Sirius rake his dirty hair back from the striking angles of his face, already Remus found himself needing to bite down on his tongue to keep from singing.

He couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ , let his nature threaten the beautiful human, but he could not deny that he was grieving for more than the ache of his nature being denied. The human was more than fair of face and form; he had his own magic to him. There was an air of contradiction that seemed to flicker frenetically in the spaces between his words and around the corners of his long limbs; at once achingly sincere and unflinchingly sardonic; at once effortlessly graceful and clumsy with eagerness; all good humor and kindness while at the same time his eyes betrayed a depth of sorrow that Remus recognized. They were so nearly strangers still, but nevertheless Remus felt bereft for the loss of the human, in all his complexity, and he had not even yet departed.

“Ahoy, Remus,” Remus jolted from his thoughts at the sound of his name, looking up to see James smiling at his surprised expression, “Forgive me for interrupting your brooding, I know I gave you leave to have at it,” Remus shook his head and James went on, shifting his weight between his feet with uncharacteristic hesitation, “I was wondering if we might trouble you for one last favor?”

Remus’ heart lurched at the finality of the word ‘ _last’_ , but in spite of it or perhaps in light of it, he found himself nodding his agreement, “Yes,” he said, “I should like to help.”

“So you’ve mentioned once or twice,” James teased warmly.

“What can I do, James?” Remus asked, levering him up from his prone position with one curl of his tail.

“Well, it’s our raft,” James said, gesturing to the makeshift boat with as much pride as would befit a many-sailed warship, “She would travel more easily by water than upon our backs on land,”

“I could show you the way along the shore,” Remus offered, eyeing the raft a bit skeptically.

“That is generous,” James said, and then paused, grimacing as he admitted, “But I fear she has not the fortitude to be steered through tides carrying the weight of three…”

It occurred to Remus what James was suggesting before the human put it into words, “I could pull it,” Remus said, “It is swifter to swim than to walk, I should think.”

The hesitant expression on James’ face gave way to a smile of gratitude, “You’re a marvelous chap, Remus, have I told you that?” before Remus could answer that he in fact had not, James reached out and _patted_ the top of Remus’ head fondly and turned back to address the others as Remus blinked in flabbergastment, “Oi, men!” he proclaimed, in the particular tone Remus had noticed James employed whenever he was styling himself leader, “We shall have our friend Remus to thank not only for keeping us fed and watered these last days, but for the state of our backs on the rest of this adventure!”

“And what does that mean?” Peter asked, smiling bemusedly at James’ unspecific announcement. Remus barely heard him in his state of sentimental distraction, his astonished annoyance at having his head patted evaporating in the wake of the precious word _‘friend’_ resounding in his head.

“He has most graciously agreed to transport our raft to the river for us,” James beamed, “So we may be spared her weight on our march!”

Remus managed to ignore the bittersweet warmth of being considered a friend enough to focus, his eyes traveling back to Sirius, curious what he would make of this news. He was frowning, his lovely brow furrowed deeply, “He’s not a pack mule, James,” he chided, before his attention turned to the water. Their eyes latched onto each other instantly, and Sirius’ seemed to be searching his, “Are you certain, Remus? You haven’t got to.”

Remus felt a sensation in his chest as though he had grown both heavier and lighter, feeling so grateful and yet so undeserving of Sirius’ concern, “I am certain, little human,” he assured. Sirius winced slightly, his cheeks blooming in a pretty flush as James and Peter exchanged a look at hearing Sirius addressed thusly. Remus realized that perhaps for some reason humans might take offense at that, and wondered absently why Sirius had never bothered to correct him. He couldn’t imagine what could be so bad about it, but nevertheless he rushed to say more in hopes of redirecting the other mens’ attention, “It will be a lighter load for me to carry by sea than it would have been over land, I should wish to ease the journey you have left ahead of you.”

“Like I said,” James said affably, though there was a curious glint in his eye as he looked between Remus and Sirius, “A marvelous, marvelous chap.” Remus could have sworn the color in Sirius’ cheeks had deepened more before he turned away, suddenly very focused on dispersing the cold cinders from the previous night’s fire with his foot.

Before the sun had yet reached its zenith, all was in readiness to leave the beach. Some strips of sailcloth from _Sirius’ home_ had been braided together and Sirius waded into the water to tie them securely to the raft to make it easier for Remus to pull. He held out the fabric cord to Remus and as he took it, he allowed his webbed fingers to brush against Sirius’, relishing the calloused warmth that his thoughts had been drawn back to again and again since their strange encounter over the cooked fish the night before. Sirius’ voice was low, thrumming with that rich vibrato that so entranced Remus, as he asked again, “Are you certain about this?”

“You need not worry, little—” Remus stopped himself this time, but not quite fast enough to keep Sirius from noticing. One of his dark eyebrows quirked up at the elegant arch and Remus found himself explaining in a stammer, “You should have bade me not call you- call you _that_. If, if it is strange, if you dislike—”

Sirius chuckled but he flushed again, the pink color softening the sharp angle of his cheekbones, “I,” he looked away, off at the horizon, “I’m not _little_ ,” he said. Remus considered the correction, looking up at him. He was the tallest of the three humans, that was true, and Remus supposed that _no_ , he wasn’t small. Yet, for all his swagger, and cleverness, and beauty, there was some inexplicable fragility to him. Perhaps it was only because he had been wounded and weak with thirst when first they’d met, but there was something about the beautiful human that seemed _wounded_ , that made Remus wish to wrap him up in his arms and his tail, to find the source of the pain as he had with the hurting ankle and to mend it. It was this that had compelled him to call Sirius ‘ _little’_ in the first place, and it was this that made it hardest to resist dragging him down into the deepest blue of the ocean, where he had always felt the safest, where he imagined in instinctive inaccuracy that Sirius too might find a sense of peace and safety.

“No,” Remus conceded, “Apology, I suppose you are not.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered uncertainly to him and _oh_ , the small wounded-ness of him was right there, right behind the grey of his lenses, “I don’t dislike it,” he admitted very quietly, before looking down at the water, “It… it _is_ strange, but I don’t…”

“You don’t?” Remus repeated, confused, and Sirius’ fingers twitched on the sailcloth rope, brushing against his again.

“I like it,” Sirius confessed, so softly that Remus nearly thought he’d imagined it. And then Sirius’ fingers were gone and he was splashing back to shore, calling over his shoulder as if nothing peculiar had just transpired, “Take care with her, Remus!”

“Aye-aye,” Remus managed to call back after a second’s delay, just the way he had heard the humans call to one another. James grinned at that and he and Pete called their farewells before the three of them disappeared into the trees, headed in the direction of the clear-water. Remus watched after them for a long moment before securing the sailcloth around his waist and beginning to swim in the direction of the river’s mouth.

He willed his mind to rest, but of course it took no heed. Thoughts seemed to spiral inward like the eddying of a whirlpool. He had hardly been away from the humans since their arrival and somehow already he had grown so used to them that swimming on his own felt _wrong_. It had not been dishonest of him to say that he wished to help them or to ease their burden, but he could not deceive himself; he did not want them to leave at all. He was surprised how fond he had grown of all of them, but it was Sirius whom his mind could not seem to stay away from. ‘ _I like it_ ’ Sirius had said, coy and maddeningly vague, and how could Remus bear to have the man go away and leave him wondering?

Remus slowed, glancing up at the raft that he pulled. _It would be a shame if it were to drift to sea,_ he thought, a wicked flare from his skull to the base of his tail as he considered, _or if it were to somehow be torn apart._ His hands clenched with the impulse, but no sooner had it occurred to him than he was overcome by a rush of utmost shame. How could he have even though such a wicked thing? He had vowed to put wickedness behind him; he wanted so dearly to be _good_ , to be _kind_ without expectations of anything in return. What better way, what more fitting way, after all, could there possibly be to defy his nature than to _help_ a ship rather than to sink it? _This is how being good feels_ , he told himself a bit bitterly. The generalities of goodness and kindness were overwhelming to consider, but the omnipresence of Sirius in his thoughts compelled him. He could do no harm to the raft that was the nearest thing to a home that the beautiful human had. Nay indeed, he’d sooner die than take that from him.

He swam hard and fast the rest of the way, pushing his body to work harder in an effort to clear his head. It didn’t entirely work but it did prevent him from doing anything of which he would be ashamed. It was not a very long distance to the mouth of the clear-water and Remus reached that place before too long. The clear-water felt different, much warmer than the brine of the sea, and less buoyant, so that his body seemed to sink right along with his spirits. He allowed himself to go still, pushed this way and that slightly by the mild current.

Remus looked up at the bottom of the raft that floated above him, casting him in its murky shadow. He reached up and trailed one hand along the wood, watching pensively as his fingers glided along it. He smiled mirthlessly to himself; he was rather more pensive than he ever would have realized before learning the word. He thought about wood, how strange it was for it to start as a tree and be worked into the form of a ship by unwebbed human hands that were not altogether too different from his own hands. His head spun wondering where the tree had grown that he was touching now, that had come to mean _home_ and _freedom_ and who could say what else to the man who had come to mean something to Remus that he did not have the words to name.

After a long while in contemplation, Remus swam out from under the raft and broke through the surface of the water. It was purely by chance that he should breach the water at the same moment that Sirius emerged from behind the trees, their eyes snapping together almost instantaneously. Sirius’ face split into a broad smile as he walked swiftly to the riverbank, but Remus couldn’t seem to muster better than a half-smile, “No need to look so melancholy, little fish,” Sirius said archly and Remus tried to scowl, but it surprised a laugh out of him all the same.

“I am not a fish,” Remus corrected, unsure what else to say, but his voice gave him away, the strain of sadness apparent in the tone.

Sirius’ smile faltered upon hearing it, “There goes my mouth again,” he said apologetically, “Worry not, I won’t call you that again.”

Remus shook his head, as if to transmit that he didn’t mind the peculiar term. In truth it made something bloom warmly in his chest only quickly to wilt, “It is only that I doubt you shall have many chances,” Remus pointed out bleakly.

“So you’re not going to follow along with us then,” Sirius’ voice had gone strangely flat and his expression went hard, shutting Remus out. Or at any rate, _trying_ to shut Remus out. He did not quite succeed, disappointment edging on pain tightening the tiny muscles in his face, that small woundedness raw and on display.

“I…” Remus stammered out as rustling from the treeline announced the imminent arrival of James and Peter. He twisted his hands around the sailcloth under the water and forced the words out of his mouth before he could think better of them, “Would it please you for me to follow?”

Sirius’ adam’s apple bobbed and his tongue wet his lips as if preparing to speak. At that moment, James and Peter burst from the treeline, laughing boisterously at some joke, “Ahoy there! Well bloody met!” James crowed at the sight of Remus.

But Remus’ eyes stayed glued to Sirius. He was half sure that he had imagined it when Sirius _nodded_ , but then he followed it in a whisper, “If it would please you, Remus, then it would please me.”

Once, years before, Remus’ father had told him a story about an island mountain, covered in trees and towns and life, that one day for no discernible reason had erupted into an inferno. He had described how the water had heated as liquid fire had met it and transformed upon contact to stone. What happened behind Remus’ ribs surely could have rivaled that eruption; a veritable explosion of heat and light and possibility. But even as the smile of it spread across Remus’ face, he knew that it brought with it too all the risk and danger of that red-hot and reckless liquid fire.

Sirius was smiling a little uncertainly, but when Remus nodded back, it broke again into a grin more dazzling than anything Remus had ever seen or even imagined. James appeared beside Sirius, reaching up to sling one arm over his shoulders, “What are we so jovial about?” he asked good-naturedly, looking between their smiling faces.

“Remus is coming with us,” Sirius sighed out breathlessly, the tone of his voice making Remus’ face grow suddenly hot.

Peter laughed and declared the news ‘ _brilliant_ ’ while James got a peculiarly smug look on his face, “Happy to have you, mate,” James said, his voice taking on a deeply sincere note as he concluded, “You’re a Marauder, then, through and through.”

Remus’ eyes flicked from James back to Sirius again, seeking an explanation. Sirius’ smile had gone a little wistful and he gestured at the raft, explaining, “Our ship was called _the Marauder_ , and that’s what we are, too,”

“It means we’re adventurous troublemakers,” James thumped his chest with pride.

“Roaming the world in search of glory,” Peter put in.

“But _always_ sticking together,” Sirius said gravely.

“That…” Remus said, shoving his worries aside and wrapping himself up in the warmth of such a prospect, “A Marauder sounds like a fine thing to be.”

**_~Three days until the full moon~_ **

_The raft was a sad replacement for_ the Marauder _, and the river couldn’t compare with the wide horizon of the open ocean, but at least they were_ moving _again. Sirius relished the sway of the current beneath them, watching as the trees of the unfamiliar land glided by. A breeze blew his hair into his face and he lifted a hand to tuck it back behind his ear, only to find his wrists bound together._

_His first thought was of his mother, the foibles at court that had resulted in days and nights in his chamber bound to a bedpost, the passage of hours blurred by solitude and hunger. But it couldn’t be his mother, he was far beyond her clutches now. Surely it was only James or perhaps Peter’s idea of a practical joke, to slip a rope around his wrists as he dozed._

_Sirius turned to James to berate him for poor humor, only to discover that it wasn’t James that sat beside him in the raft at all. It was_ Remus _. His gaze was skyward, his long hair a riot of soft golden curls along his back, soft and dry as down feathers, the gold of it contrasted vividly against the dark emerald green of his doublet. He looked_ ravishing _, but Sirius was distracted from his beauty by the startling familiarity of the garb he wore. His eyes flitted from the white lace-edged collar, to the delicate seed pearl embellishments, to the loathsome embroidered family crest, and down along the trunk hose and canions that accented the lean athletic grace of Remus’ legs. Sirius stared uncomprehendingly at Remus’ legs, at Remus’ narrow feet in the elegant ribbon-fastened shoes, unable for his life to say why the sight so astonished him._

_He was interrupted by the nudge of a smooth knuckle beneath his chin, guiding him to lift his face. Remus’ attention was no longer on the moon and stars, but focused on Sirius and Sirius only. He was so very close, his pale skin glowing in the moonlight, his golden-green eyes drawing Sirius in with all the force of a riptide. Remus’ pink tongue wet his lips and Sirius seemed to remember the touch of that tongue against his fingers, wanted desperately, suddenly, to know how it tasted._

_It seemed that as soon as he had thought it, he got his answer. He did not remember them leaning together, and yet now Remus’ lips were pressed to his in gentle urgency. He dared to trace his tongue along the seam of Remus’ lips, or perhaps it was not so much a result of daring as it was of helpless need. Remus yielded to him and Sirius expected the mild sweetness of the seaside fruits or perhaps the brackishness of sea spray, but instead he was met with the once-pined-after taste of ale, and garden herbs, and fresh white bread._

_Sirius broke from the kiss with a gasp of surprise, not knowing when he opened his eyes if it would be the mysterious Remus or the convivial Caradoc before him. The lapping of the water against the raft sounded now more like the sputtering of onions in a hot pan, or was it the hooves of horses in the courtyard, spiriting Caradoc off to some unknown fate? Or then, was it Remus in the windowless carriage this time? Sirius blinked his eyes open but they were blurred with blood, his temple still ringing from the impact of his father’s ivory-handled cane, but he could faintly make out Remus’ face. His lips curving to the shape of Sirius’ own name as the same guards that had taken Caradoc dragged him bodily away._

“—ius? Sirius?” Remus’ voice was like a southerly wind, warmly blowing apart the illusion that had engulfed Sirius, “Wake now, Sirius, you must wake now.”

“‘M ‘wake,” Sirius grumbled, even as he blinked hard several times to make sure that this too would not tilt on its end and shift into an old blood-tinged terror. When after a few seconds it did not, he released the breath he’d been holding, trying to calm the racing of his heart by taking stock of his surroundings.

Beneath his tense back, the riverside moss was softer than the beach sand had been on their nights by the shore. The raft bobbed nearby, lashed to the deep roots of a tree, the water splashing softly against its bottom and making small _plap_ sounds. Peter was snoring. The moonlight splintered through the tree branches above. Remus’ face hovered over him, and that made it difficult to care a whit for the rest.

Remus’ bright eyes were wide with concern, a crease marring the smoothness of his white brow, his lips downturned. Sirius’ eyes lingered on his frown, wanting as in his dream to kiss him, to really taste _Remus_ and not the guilty echo of Caradoc’s stolen kisses. A small point of cold trickled down the side of Sirius’ neck and he shivered.

That broke the spell, and suddenly Remus was drawing away, pulling the wet mane of his hair over his shoulder almost apologetically. Sirius propped himself up on his elbows, one hand rising to swipe at the cool line along his neck where Remus’ hair had dripped on him, “Are you well, little human?” Remus asked so gently that for a humiliating fraction of a second, Sirius’ eyes prickled as if he were going to weep.

He opened his mouth to answer the question, only to have a sudden realization spill from his tongue instead, “You aren’t in the water!” He perhaps shouldn’t have been so surprised; it had become quite apparent that the merman could breathe air perfectly well, but until now Sirius had never seen him leave the water beyond sitting in the shallows.

“You were in distress,” Remus said, simply, as if that itself were all the explanation required. Sirius only half-heard him, his eyes following the wet trail and torn moss where Remus had obviously dragged himself the short distance from the river to Sirius’ side. Remus curled his tail to himself self-consciously but not before the moonlight could reveal to Sirius something he’d never noticed before. Through the rippling refraction of water, he had never identified the long line down the side of Remus’ tail to be a _scar_ but now it was unmistakable as just that.

“Your—?” he began.

“Are you well?” Remus repeated, his tail flicking irritably and his voice firm in a way that Sirius had not encountered from the merman before. It made it clear that the scar was not going to be discussed, and it inexplicably made Sirius’ off-kilter heart miss a beat.

“Yes,” Sirius said, though it sounded so unconvincing to him that he wasn’t surprised to see one of Remus’ golden brows lift skeptically, compelling him to honesty. “‘Twas only a dream,” he insisted. He had spoken a bit louder than he meant to, and beside him, James grunted and rolled over. Not wanting to wake his friend — whose usually inextinguishable high spirits could be spoiled almost exclusively by having his rest interrupted — Sirius shuffled closer to Remus. He half-expected the merman to bristle uncomfortably at his nearness but instead his expression softened.

“It did not appear to be a nice dream,” Remus frowned sympathetically, his voice gone very soft.

“It…” Sirius glanced sidelong at the merman, taking in his wet hair, his bare torso, the sheepish way he curled his copper-green tail around himself, heedless of the dirt that clung here and there to his skin and scales, as much a contrast to his appearance in Sirius’ dreams as could be imagined. Remus had looked very comely kitted out as a human, but Sirius shuddered now to think of him dressed in those clothes which had once been his, every last thread and button of them a prison. Still, they had sat in the dream even nearer than they sat now, and Remus had kissed him, “Some of it was nice…”

“And some of it was not,” Remus said, less a question that it was an observation.

Sirius shrugged, “You need not concern yourself with it, Remus,” he evaded.

“You were in _distress_ ,” Remus repeated, his airy voice pitching slightly with impatience.

“It was just a troubling dream!” Sirius insisted, crossing his arms, “Now I’m awake!”

Damningly, his voice faltered on the last word and Remus did not miss it, “But still troubled,” he pointed out, gently.

Sirius groaned, but did not answer. His throat seemed to have tightened somewhat and he didn’t trust his voice to remain even. He dropped his head into his hands and sucked in a deep breath.

The dream was far from unique. The only thing that was new was the presence of Remus in it. Mother’s rope ‘round his wrists, the blaring pain from Father’s cane, the gnawing unknown of what had befallen Caradoc, the only boy he’d dared to even nearly love… all of that visited upon his dreams quite often. If anything, the dream had been mercifully mild, not lingering over the wringing ache of hunger or the pain of beatings, the suffocating farce of court or the many dreadful things that might have been done to Caradoc for being fool enough to kiss him.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the weight of a hand, Remus’ hand, on his shoulder. The touch was slightly warm through the tattered linen of his shirt. He lifted his head from his hands and chanced a look at Remus. The concern was plain on the merman’s face, and Sirius found his mouth opening, words pouring from him more or less of their own volition, “My parents are powerful people,” he said, in a rush, “Who have done a great number of abominable things. But were you to pose to them the question, they would cast me as the abomination and believe with utter confidence that it was the truth.”

Before his eyes, Remus eyebrows twitched upward and a surprised breath, half-laugh and half-gasp, escaped him, “I fear my parents would do the same,” he confided.

Sirius swiveled his body, better to face Remus, utterly shocked to hear the merman empathize with that sentiment. He had seemed very reluctant to speak of other merfolk on their last night on the beach, but his hand curved warmly to Sirius’ shoulder and he did not pull away, “Why?” Sirius dared to ask.

Remus’ mouth twisted slightly, his fins curling and uncurling before he said in a voice like a forlorn wind, “I should not wish to live as others of my kind live.”

There it was, that longing sadness that Sirius recognized, in Remus as in the minstrel’s ballad of the mermaid that had always resonated so in himself. He smiled, despite the ache of it, at the kinship he and the merman shared, “It is the same with me,” he said.

Remus glanced over at Peter and James, sleeping soundly, before looking back at Sirius, his eyes measuring him curiously, “You do not seem so much unlike other humans,” he pointed out.

Sirius shrugged the shoulder that Remus was not touching, unwilling to risk jostling away the warm reassuring press of that hand, “Not unlike other _humans_ , perhaps, as a whole,” he explained, “But I am most unlike my parents’ sort.”

“What sort of human is that?” Remus asked, his hand distractedly sliding from Sirius’ shoulder to rub slowly along his upper arm.

The touch was soothing and it made the words come a little more easily, “You won’t have ever seen their like,” he explained, nostrils flaring in distaste at the thought of his parents and their courtly fellows, “They don’t deign to visit ports or markets when they could have a servant do it for them. And they would never even consider stepping foot on a sailing ship as I did,” one corner of Remus’ mouth curled up at the way Sirius proudly set himself apart, “They’re noble, you see,” he went on to explain, “Born of higher status with a great, great surplus of coin.”

“Oh!” Remus said, bearing the very expression of a child who knows the answer to a tutor’s question, “I have heard of coin!”

Sirius could not help but laugh at the sweet naiveté of that, going on to say, “Yes, well, my parents have enough of the stuff that they can more or less do whatever they bloody please.”

Remus wrinkled his nose and Sirius’ stomach fluttered; he had not witnessed that particular expression on the merman’s face before and it inexplicably delighted him, “I…” Remus’ hand moved from his upper arm to the inside of Sirius’ elbow, which the torn shirtsleeve did not cover, and Sirius did his best to conceal a shudder of pleasure at the impossible satin-softness of the webbed fingers on his bare skin, “Apology, but that does not sound so… abominable,” he said.

Sirius considered that, “No,” he agreed, “I suppose merely _having_ all that coin might be well enough, if what they _pleased_ was to keep the hungry poor fed or, or to patronize the arts or some such,” he grimaced, loath to explain, loath to tarnish the innocence with which Remus viewed human affairs, “But I’m afraid what they _please_ is only to keep themselves rich and powerful. Even if, nay, _especially_ _if_ they need to crush those beneath them to do so.”

Remus nodded sagely, “But you,” he said, trailing his soft fingers down the inside of Sirius’ arm until they reached his palm, where they pressed lightly, a bit curiously, “You would feed the hungry or… pra- patternize the arts?”

“S-something like that, yeah,” Sirius said, his voice coming out short of breath. He could tell from the small line between Remus’ brows that he was wondering why Sirius had not stayed to do just that, and he suddenly couldn’t bear to have him not understand, “I couldn’t have stayed, Remus,” he said in a quiet plea, his heart battering his ribs as he curled his fingers around Remus’, “It all would have been mine as their heir, but I _couldn’t_ have.”

“Why?” Remus breathed, the word barely making a sound.

“I…” Sirius’ heart beat harder still, “An heir must marry and produce more heirs.”

“You…?” Sirius realized he had no clue how long he’d been half sucked in to the golden-green depths of Remus’ eyes only then, as they left his to look down at their linked hands. He watched an expression of confusion gather on Remus’ features as the pad of his thumb grazed silkily, thoughtfully, over the rough skin of Sirius’ knuckles. Then he squeezed the hand encouragingly and the confusion cleared from his face as he met Sirius’ eyes again. They swam with kindness as he nodded his understanding with a simple, “Oh.”

It was all a little too much; too near to the hurt, too open, too soft. It was that open softness that invited pain. It could invite great joy, too, but Sirius could hardly dare to hope, and it was all too much now with the fear tremor of his nightmare still lingering coiled in his spine. He hated to do it, but he slipped his hand from Remus’, and folded his arms instead, “What about you?” he asked, pretending not to see the flash of loss in Remus’ eyes, pretending not to feel the loss of contact so acutely himself. He tore his eyes from Remus’, peering significantly at the scar that Remus’ position did not quite conceal, “For what trespass did your parents cast you out?”

“I’m like you,” Remus said at once, like the whisper of wind.

Sirius was unable to keep the hope from his breathless words as he asked, “You are?”

Even in the silver of the moonlight, there was no missing the way that Remus’ face paled, “Y-yes, I, I,” he stammered, “I’m not interested in _power_ ,” he shook his head and swayed, “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he didn’t manage to regain his balance, and Sirius had to catch him to keep him from collapsing.

“You’re unwell,” he said, hearing the panic in his voice, noticing for the first time as Remus sagged weakly the small scrapes along the fair skin of his lean, muscular chest and abdomen. He felt a pang of guilt at the thought that for some reason his _distress_ had been worth this to the merman.

“I need the water,” Remus said, a little thickly, digging his fingers into the soil as if he meant to drag himself back to the river.

“I should like to help,” Sirius teased, though the words came out tense. They made Remus’ lips curl into a muzzy smile nonetheless, as Sirius clambered to his feet and leant down again, scooping up the merman into his arms. He was a bit of an awkward weight to carry, slick scales and satiny skin sliding in Sirius’ grip, but he was warmer and lighter than Sirius expected. He tightened his arms around the merman, unable to resist tucking his face close to him as he walked. Remus’ scent was like nothing Sirius had ever encountered, and at the same time smelled of the sea, the salty windswept blue-green smell, at once musty and ancient, yet as fresh as a plucked leaf. Beneath the sea smell was something warmer, much warmer than the ocean’s blue depths or stinging spray, something entirely Remus, golden-pale and delicate as sweetened cream.

At the river’s edge, Sirius dropped to his knees, reluctantly loosening his hold on Remus and depositing him gently back into the water. For a petrifying second he sank underneath before his face emerged again, his eyes already clearer than they had been a moment before. A relieved smile stretched across Sirius’ face and he said, a bit giddily, “There you are, little fish,”

Remus did not appear to mind, his cheeks coloring as he rolled his eyes, “Go back to sleep, little human,” he returned, before diving beneath the water, moonlight flashing silver against his coppery scales.

_**~Two days until the full moon~** _

Remus had seldom bothered to swim the clear-water, and more seldom still had he ventured so far inland. It was very different than the open ocean waters that had always been his home, but he was surprised to find himself growing fond of the landscape. There was something comforting about the canopy of trees that arched over the clear-water, their roots webbing its bank and drinking deeply. He enjoyed the smell of the soil and the moss and the small animals of the woods that did not tend to stray as far as the sandy shore.

He was no fool, though; he had not deluded himself to the fact that it was not only the trees and the green smells that made him feel at home, but the humans whose company he kept. The sunlight filtered yellow and green through the leaves and Remus swam alongside the raft as the humans leisurely rowed and talked, and he found himself in an ongoing state of surprise at how much he felt a part of it. And today, they were doing something they had not done since he’d found them. Today, they _sang._

It was in perplexity that he watched and listened as Peter led the humans in a raucous shanty, his voice cracking and squeaking as each verse listed the various ill fates that befell the ship in the song. The drinking water spoiled, _hi-ho hi-ho_ ; the wind fell still, _hi-ho hi-ho_ ; rats in the cargo, _hi-ho hi-ho_ ; and so on it went, until at long last, the wretched boat spun three times around and sank. Sirius and James laughed and clapped Peter on the back for his enthusiastic performance, and Remus wondered affectionately how it was that humans could find such merriment in their own misfortune.

“What say you, Remus?” James asked, in his easy-smiling, affable way, “As sweet as siren song, aye?”

Before Remus could even begin to try to choose the words to answer that misguided remark, Sirius was speaking up, jabbing James in the ribs none-too-gently as he chastised, “Oi, you know he doesn’t like to speak of it,”

The tight coil of unease in Remus’ chest loosened at the clumsily protective gesture from Sirius, “‘Twas far lovelier than any siren’s song,” he said, half-teasing and half-honest. In truth, Peter’s song was far safer to the listener, if not as kind to the ear, “You should be proud of your gift, Peter.”

Peter chuckled at that and rolled his eyes, “Bugger that,” he dismissed, “Sirius is the only one of us what can sing worth his salt, but he only sings sad songs.”

“I do _not_ ,” Sirius denied stubbornly, the color rising in his golden cheeks as he added in a grumble, “Just think sad songs are more honest.”

“Ah, there’s the tragic romancer that sets the ladies swooning in every port,” James said ruffling Sirius’ hair.

Sirius shoved James away, focusing on his rowing and looking supremely uncomfortable, “I should think that is true,” Remus spoke up, both to save Sirius from the unwanted attention and because it happened to be his real opinion, “Sad songs are more honest than merry ones.”

Sirius peered at Remus from beneath his dark lashes, through the tangle of dark hair that James had pushed into his face. Uncertainly played across his lips, not quite a smile and not quite a frown, before he bit his lip and invited softly, “I know a sad song about a mermaid.”

“Coy bastard,” Peter rolled his eyes again, and directed his explanation at Remus, “It’s his favorite.”

It was strange to think that humans wrote songs about merfolk at all, stranger still to think that one of these was Sirius’ favorite song. It was vain, he knew it was, but Remus couldn’t help but wonder if he reminded the beautiful human of the song at all. The thought of the human’s resonant voice in song had occurred to him a number of times since their meeting and the prospect of actually hearing it made Remus’ tail weak. He hooked his arms over the side of the raft, allowing himself to be pulled along by the work of the men’s crude oars. Sirius smiled at the gesture as Remus rested his chin upon his forearm, saying sincerely, “I should like very much to hear your sad mermaid song.”

Sirius’ face went marvelously pink at that, and he set down his oar, tucking his hair behind his ears with both hands. He shut his eyes, and peripherally Remus noted James and Peter exchanging a look ridiculing their friend’s seriousness. Remus had eyes only for Sirius, however, and had to make an effort to keep from holding his breath in anticipation.

“ _ **[I sing no more](https://soundcloud.com/meow4119/mermaids-lament)** ,_” Sirius began, ironically. His voice was a plaintive tenor, faltering slightly on the first words but gaining strength as he went on, _“to the ships on the lee. One cannot sing when one is not free…”_ the words constricted around Remus’ heart and he wondered if the human who had written them had any idea of their truth, could have ever dreamed that somewhere there was a merperson like him who had sworn off raising his voice in song. Sirius’ voice lacked the ethereal purity of the siren song that rang in Remus’ very blood, but was all the more beautiful for it, quavering with exquisite human fragility on the higher notes, filling Remus with the warmth of its deeper tones, _“With my dear love ashore, and my heart gone with thee…”_

He paused here, long enough only to wet his lips and draw in a breath, not nearly long enough for Remus to recover from what he had heard so far. Sirius’ expressive dark brows softened as he sang on, unmistakably aching for the plight of the song’s narrator, “ _Bound am I, dear my love, to the deep, deep salt-sea,”_ His sweet beauty was almost too much to bear combined with his sweet voice. But only almost; in truth, Remus was too bewitched to even think of looking away, “ _Bound to the blue that my home e'er must be…_ ” Remus felt a pang for the ocean of which Sirius sang, both longing for it and guilty that he did not miss it more, “ _Bound, dear my love, to be parted from thee…”_

Remus forgot all about the pull of that deep, deep salt-sea when Sirius opened his eyes, glancing furtively at Remus as he sang on, “ _O, if I were a maiden, you would love me the best,”_ the shorn yearning of the human’s voice tugged at Remus’ heartstrings. He wished that he were holding Sirius’ hand again as he had done, however briefly, the night before. He knew it had not been the intended meaning of the song’s words almost certainly, but he could not miss the way they resonated with Sirius’ half-confessed inability to love and desire as other humans expected him to. As if to prove as much, his cheeks flushed slightly and a sad pining smile curved his lips as his eyes fell to Remus’ own mouth, “ _...would kiss me, and comfort me sweetly to rest,”_ he looked away, _“Love would heal the poor heart that breaks in my breast…”_

 _“O, if I were a selkie,”_ he sang, the melody lilting in a sad rhythm not unlike the cyclical sound of ocean waves, _“I’d go o’er the sand, and I’d knock upon your door, my skin in my hand,_ ” Remus was surprised at how the words roused in him an unfamiliar envy of the selkies he’d encountered, the ease with which they could traverse both land and sea. He had never dared try, and given how rapidly being out of the water had wearied him the previous night, he ought not to. Never before had the boundaries of the water felt so like a prison to him.

As Sirius’ voice caressed the words of the refrain again, bemoaning the mermaid’s fate of being bound to the sea, Remus’ mind ran its fingers through the similarities in his and the beautiful human’s anguish. Both scorned by their families, both at war with the very blood that was the source of their life. As Sirius suffered for the thwarted longing for love that came not from a bride, Remus suffered for his thwarted longing to share his waterbound world with someone who would not drown. They were hardly equal crimes, Remus knew, but humans were foolish and he could not muster shock that they held coarse views about matters of the heart. Among merpeople there was no taboo of loving one who shared your sex, but, he thought bitterly, there was great taboo in not wishing to sink human ships.

“ _O, if I were to die,”_ Sirius sang on, the desperation in his voice, verging on _wishing_ , drawing Remus out of his maudlin thoughts. He was surprised by the spike of fear he felt at the very thought of Sirius wishing for death, “ _And my soul come unchained, in the first morning gleam I’d fly me away,”_ His grey eyes shone as they strayed back to Remus, locking with his this time and not letting go, even as the flush in his cheeks deepened ever more, “ _And hang my love o’er your heart, forever to stay…”_

It was merely poetry, Remus reminded himself, merely a song of unrequited love. He knew and reminded himself soundly, that Sirius _could not_ feel these things for him. They were drawn to each other, yes, he would not deny that, but the human hardly knew him! And if he did, it would change everything. If he knew what was in Remus’ nature to do, what Remus _had done_ to humans before, he would look at him with only revulsion and disdain. Still, as Sirius sang the words _‘my dear love’_ again, he performed them as though he meant them, eyes glittering enchantingly. His lips, Remus found himself thinking, looked incredibly soft as they curled meaningfully around the words, “ _...my heart yours to keep…”_

Remus bit down on his lip against this thought, quelling with it the increasingly difficult-to-ignore urge to sing along with Sirius, now that the melody had worked itself into him, _“Bound am I,_ ” Sirius sang again, eyes drifting from Remus’ only so far as his teeth upon his lip, _“Dear my love, to the deep, deep salt-sea. Bound to the blue that my grave e’er shall be,”_ the foreboding words served to remind Remus of his determination to protect the human and he bit down on his lip harder against the song trying to rise from his throat. The blue of the sea was not destined to be Sirius’ grave, even if he himself must die to make it so, _“Bound, dear my love, to be parted from thee,_ ” Sirius slowed, his lovely voice making the most of the words and the pauses between as he sang them one more time before falling silent, _“Bound, dear my love… to be parted from thee…”_

For a moment, nobody said anything, only the sounds of the clear-water lapping at the oars and the birds in the trees overhead to be heard. James broke the silence, of course, as he was wont to do, grabbing up the oar Sirius had set down and shoving it back into his friend’s hands, “ _Bravissimo_ and all that,” he said, with his typically indelicate but abundantly friendly good humor, “But crooning to your merman doesn’t actually make us go any faster,”

“I’m not _his_ ,” Remus said, pushing away from the side of the raft at the same instant that Sirius protested, “He’s not _mine._ ” James guffawed, but Remus determinedly kept his eyes to the water ahead, winding like a blue ribbon through the trees. His arms had dried in the air and the water felt unnaturally cold against them in contrast, but he reminded himself stubbornly that it was in the water that he belonged. _Bound_ , he considered, just like the dismal mermaid in Sirius’ song. The thought made his already pink cheeks burn hotter and he submerged himself, waiting for his blush to cool away. He swam beneath the humans’ raft in the privacy of the water that had never before felt to him quite so much like a curse.

_**~One day until the full moon~** _

Sirius stayed as still as he could bear, up to his waist in the water, watching the fish as it guilelessly drew closer to him. Its movements were hard to predict and Sirius knew from the dozen or so that had eluded him thus far that there was a damn good chance it was going to flit away just at the last second. All the same, he sucked in a breath and held it, shutting his eyes as he stabbed down with his makeshift harpoon.

He felt it strike his quarry and opened his eyes, an astonished laugh escaping him at the sight of blood staining the water, “I’ve done it!” he exclaimed victoriously, holding up the stuck fish and rounding on Remus in his excitement.

“Well done,” Remus said politely, even as he deposited a sixth fish on the shore beside Sirius’ discarded shirt and the other five fish, none of which Sirius was responsible for catching.

Sirius couldn’t contain the laugh that burst out of him at the sight of Remus’ expression, courteous and nearly apologetic… and not even remotely impressed, “What, Remus?” he lay his free hand on his hip beneath the water and canted his head to the side audaciously, asking in tone of playful propriety, “Do I not astound thee?”

The mask of civil passivity that Remus wore slipped before Sirius’ eyes, exposing for the briefest of moments an expression of unmistakable astonishment. Sirius’ own smile faltered at the sight of it; Remus’ lips parting, a muscle between his eyebrows twitching as the light of hunger poured from his large golden-green eyes. He recovered himself quickly, schooling his expression back to one of relative indifference as he glided closer to Sirius. Mercy, but he was gorgeous, his pearly gold skin catching the green of the sunlight through the leaves, the blues and golds that bounced off the water.

An ache sharper than Sirius’ fishing reed tore through him at the thought of saying farewell to the merman, of seeing one last flash of his tail before he swam downriver back to the ocean. James and Peter had gone ahead on foot today, scouting to see if the town of Godric’s Cove was as near as Remus believed it to be. Sirius knew he ought to be excited by the prospect of reaching their original destination; the promise of a bath and a meal of something other than fish cooked over a campfire alone should be incentive enough. But it would mean saying goodbye to Remus, and that hurt more than it had any right to. Yes, it had been easy enough to convince him to follow them as they rafted the river ( _‘Would it please you?’_ he’d asked), but now the inevitable time to part was drawing near.

 _How am I to bid him farewell,_ Sirius bemoaned to himself, _when I’ve only just finally found him?_

The thought came unbidden, surprising Sirius with the clarity of its desperation. Once he had acknowledged it — that feeling of having _finally_ found something he had been looking for — there could be no ignoring it. Remus was right in front of him now, pointing to the fish still squirming on his reed and saying something that didn’t quite reach Sirius’ mind. He couldn’t seem to hear over the distraction of Remus’ proximity, the flush of his cheeks, the wet cascade of his golden hair, the look of exasperation in his hypnotic eyes. He was so very close now, and Sirius’ breath caught as Remus lifted his hand. Any second, he was sure, he would feel the satiny touch of the merman’s skin against his shoulder or _good God,_ perhaps his face.

His dreamy reverie was interrupted when Remus’ hand landed not on Sirius, but on the fish impaled on his reed, one sure flick of his wrist snapping the fish’s spine so that it fell still. To Sirius’ horror some of the blood that had been burning in his cheeks rushed southward at that. The confident primal knowledge of life and death in Remus’ webbed white hands excited in Sirius an admiration that fizzed and hungered to know what else Remus’ body knew how to do.

“...said it’s best to put them out of their misery,” Remus said and Sirius realized he was repeating himself, crossing his arms over the wiry muscle of his chest and frowning at Sirius, “What were you waiting for?”

“ _You_ ,” the word slipped out of Sirius’ mouth without his permission, hushed and reverent and searingly honest. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but when Sirius saw the frown slide from Remus’ face and be replaced by an uncertain smile, he threw all his caution to the wind and admitted the truth that had only just crystallized within his own thoughts, “I was waiting for _you_.”

There was a flash of _something_ in Remus’ eyes, something that wrenched at Sirius’ heart, something as dark as the deepest depths of the ocean and at the same time as brilliant as the sunlight that flashed on the crests of its waves. His sharp teeth pressed down upon the pink flesh of his lower lip, a sound emanating from his throat that was like nothing Sirius had ever heard; it seemed at once to be a hum within Sirius’ own head of his own voice, and to be a product of nature itself, or of God if there really was one. Surely only a deity could produce a sound that consisted not of air but of light, of sweetness, of divinity itself.

But then Remus swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing, and the sound was gone. And the leaf-dappled sunlight around them was perhaps not quite so hazy as it had seemed an instant before, the water perhaps not quite so warm, “You,” Remus said haltingly, the imprint of the points of his teeth remaining on his lip for a second before the blood rushed back, leaving it redder than it had been. Then he found his words, “You needed me to do it?” one of his brows lifted in a sharp challenge, his voice low and enthralling as a storm wind as he asked leadingly, “Surely a sailor such as yourself isn’t scared to handle a little fish?”

Sirius’ next breath faltered, snagging as if on the sharp corner of his racing heart. His eyes felt drawn to Remus’, tugged up from the tempting pink mischief of his mouth. The golden-green of Remus’ gaze, like the sunlight-tipped waves, met the stone-grey of Sirius’ with all the timeless inevitability of the waves meeting the shore. Remus was so very close and the whole world seemed somehow to tighten, so that there was not enough space and not enough air. The look of daring on Remus’ face, rakish and sly, looked somehow out of place on the features that Sirius had come to think of as pure, even naive. There was something irresistible about the ribald expression upon the soft features of Remus’ angelic face. Sirius felt the tension coil around him, felt the floating question heavy in the space between his lips and Remus’.

It was _too much_ , suddenly. Much too much. And in a sudden paroxysm of childishness, Sirius broke the tension the only way he could think to.

With his left hand, he doused Remus with a mighty _splash_.

The uncharacteristic expression fell from Remus’ face, seductive leer giving way to a lopsided smile of delighted shock. His eyes just barely narrowed before a swipe of his tail delivered a splash that knocked Sirius’ feet out from under him. The laughter bubbled out of Sirius giddily, as he emulated Remus’ move with a kick of one long leg, resulting in a comparatively unimpressive splash. Remus outdid him again, employing his peculiar magic to pull up a small wave from the river and dropping it atop Sirius’ head, “Y-you rascal!” Sirius sputtered, spitting out river water and trying to ignore how his own laughter undercut his words, “That isn’t playing fair!”

“Who,” Remus countered, his own words staggered by his laughter, like windchimes, “Who said anything about f— _oof!_ ” He was cut off by the force of Sirius’ impact against his chest. Remus had the obvious advantage as far as splashing was concerned, which meant that all Sirius had going for him was the element of surprise. It was this he drew upon as he tackled the merman, taking a leap of faith that merpeople might be as ticklish as humans.

Judging by the squawk of laughter that Sirius’ fingers scrabbling along Remus’ ribs — _damn_ , but his skin was soft! — had elicited, they were ticklish indeed. Or Remus was, at any rate. They squirmed gracelessly in a tangle of childish mirth, Remus’ tail twining with Sirius’ long legs as his hands grabbed at Sirius’ in an effort to make his tickling cease. Through eyes squinted nearly all of the way shut in the moment’s mad hilarity, Sirius hardly even registered the closeness of Remus’ face to his until the tip of a nose bumped against his own and his laugh turned into a gasp in the instant before Remus’ mouth covered his.

Remus’ lips were so soft — softer than fresh butter or down feathers or how Sirius imagined summer clouds must feel — and yet at their press it was Sirius who yielded. His hands, too, yielded, relaxing at Remus’ sides and flattening reverently against the impossible smoothness of Remus’ body. Sirius opened his mouth in eager invitation and when Remus mirrored the gesture, their tongues meeting in a sensual slide, all else but the merman’s touch seemed to evaporate. Kissing him was _nothing_ like kissing Caradoc had been, those stolen kisses had been all heat, all rebellious impudence, all scratchy teenaged stubble and salt. Remus was all freshness, all newness, his taste as pure and sweet as dew at dawn and Sirius a man dying of thirst, parched for a drink of him.

Sirius’ hands pulled Remus closer, a sigh leaking into their kiss at the feel of the merman’s smooth chest against his own. His tongue curled around Remus’ and he felt it vibrate against him as Remus hummed appreciatively. And there it was again, that utterly divine sound! Only this time it did not only _seem_ to be inside of Sirius’ own head, it _was_ , pouring from Remus’ mouth and into Sirius’. Nothing, surely, in the history of all men, had ever been sweeter than Remus’ voice as it wove in and out of Sirius’ skull, with all the mesmerizing intricacy of the harmonizing voices of a choir.

Remus’ hands glided up Sirius’ arms and the song of him — for it did not seem like a performance but rather more like it was the melody of Remus’ own beautiful, ineffable existence — grew somehow sweeter and stronger. Sirius sank into Remus, every fiber of him fiercely needing to be closer and closer still. He had the dreamy sensation that he was the snowmelt running off a mountain as spring thawed, liquefying and flowing downhill into Remus’ welcoming gravity, into Remus who was himself the inviting sea.

Remus’ hands put all the finest silks and satins that had once filled Sirius’ wardrobe to shame; his touch was a thousand times smoother and a million times more precious. His touch roamed along the blessedly bare skin of Sirius’ shoulders and his chest, sliding sinuously along his back and cradling his waist. Even his scales were smooth, smooth as river rocks, waterworn, though warmer than any sunned stone, warm with the sacred life of him that burned within. His tail curled around Sirius and _oh_ , being wrapped in him held more succor, more tenderness than all of the comforts of all the grand and meager places that Sirius had called home.

He needed _more_ , more of his sweet smooth warmth and more of the intricately melodious voice that filled every tender slide of their kiss, filled every achingly empty crack in Sirius’ mind and soul. Sirius’ hands buried themselves in Remus’ hair as they had so longed to do, finding it sumptuously soft to the touch, using this valuable new leverage to angle Remus’ head to make their kiss deeper still. He had _known_ there was something lovely and unearthly about Remus’ mouth but he never could have supposed that the meaning of life itself was tucked beneath his tongue, hiding in the delirious beauty of his voice. Remus’ mouth, as it turned out, was all Sirius had been missing, all he needed. More of it, and more still, and he would have _everything_ and want for nothing.

Sirius’ rhapsodic need for Remus’ mouth and the sound of Remus’ mellifluous soul was so vast and all encompassing that he barely even registered the cool slip of water against his face. When the next distracted inhale of his nose drew the sharp wrongness of water instead of air into his chest, Sirius’ body spasmed inconveniently and his only fear was that it might interrupt the kiss around which his world now revolved. His unaccommodating body stiffened and coughed as his lungs found no air, but luckily Remus’ transcendently sweet mouth stayed steadfastly sealed to his. Remus remained patient, his kind tongue fluttering and stroking Sirius’ consolingly as he choked haplessly into Remus.

Sirius’ hands had begun to tingle and holding onto Remus’ silken hair grew difficult and he allowed them to slacken. They gripped at Remus, a little clumsily, seeking to pull him closer. The pain in his chest was growing distant as one of his hands drifted heavily down Remus’ side, the roughened skin of his palm rasping along the absence of scales in the raised ridge of Remus’ scar.

And suddenly there was silence, or the overwhelming sense of it, at any rate, as the reverberating melody that had been flowing from Remus’ throat into Sirius’ mouth came abruptly to an end. Something like a moan of dismay tried to rise from Sirius but came out closer to a gurgle. He supposed it was not true silence that had fallen, but the rushing in his ears and the dense sloshing water sounds were very distant to him. The hazy goldenness of a moment before shriveled into the suffocating green-dark of his tunneling vision as he opened his eyes, hardly able to make sense of the blurry horror-struck planes of Remus’ face as his mouth, which was all that mattered, ripped away from Sirius’. He was bereft of it and the anguish of the loss competed with confusion as Remus’ hands grew hard against him, a forceful press that had him suddenly breaking through the river’s surface and back into the world.

At the touch of air against his wet skin, Sirius’ body on sheer desperate instinct alone tried to gulp in a breath, only to trigger a violent fit of coughing. Water sprayed from his mouth, his throat burning with it, his nose and eyes streaming. Sirius' brain whirred and skipped, trying to make sense of what had transpired, but he could hardly think beyond the painful spasms of his coughing. He was vaguely aware of trembling hands against his back and then he felt Remus’ intervention, that same peculiarly eerie invasive feeling he had experienced when Remus had healed his injured ankle, inexplicable tendrils nudging in his lungs, acting like some sort of absorbent sponge and sucking up the water so that it trickled up his throat and poured unnaturally from his mouth.

Sirius could feel it when the last of it was gone, but even if he had not been able to identify that moment, he would have known it when Remus’ hands left his skin as suddenly as if he had been burned. Sirius spat twice on the rocks and in doing so realized that his hands were pressed to the soil, his body halfway out of the river. He wiped his nose on the wet, freckled skin of his forearm and chanced a glance over his shoulder at Remus.

The merman recoiled violently from the direction of his gaze, “S-sorry,” he stammered, consonant sounds barely forming in the stripped wind-sound of his voice, “Apology,” he added, sinking into the water like a turtle retreating into its shell. His voice cracked brokenly as he rushed out one of the phrases Sirius suspected he had taught him, “P-pardon me.”

“Remus,” Sirius rasped, wincing at the shattered sound of his own speech as well as the effect it had on Remus, his already-aghast expression crumpling inward, “It is w-well,” he lied, “I’m not s-scared.” Truth be told, fear was certainly one of the feelings cringing inside him, second only to the staggering confusion.

“D-don’t,” Remus hissed, sounding nearly unhinged with emotion, “Don’t forgive me,” He ducked under the water and with a flash of his tail, he was gone. Sirius blinked after him, swore colorfully, and lay his forehead on his quivering forearms, attempting to organize some of the chaos of his thoughts and pushing back against the agony he felt at what he dearly, _dearly_ hoped had not been Remus’ final farewell.


	3. Chapter 3

_~The day of the full moon~_

Remus could feel the pull of the nearing moon like anxious fingers tugging at his body. It was all he had against which to measure the passage of time, removed as he was from the reach of daylight, and far as he was from the reassuring rhythm of the ocean tides moving in and out. Perhaps he would have been better off returning to the sea, as he was destined to do, _bound_ to do just as was the mermaid of Sirius’ sad song. At the thought of Sirius, every muscle of Remus ached with need, only to cringe an instant later in self-recrimination. He curled tighter, tucked himself deeper into the mud amidst the tangle of tree roots that lined the river’s bank.

He ran his hand along his scar. As he did, he imagined that he could again feel the hot slash of his father’s magic, marking him forever as outcast. His own son, his _only_ son, choosing the cruel, weak, _delicious_ humans over the proud tradition of his entire race. Remus could feel, too, as he caressed that jagged line that cut through his scales, the echo of Sirius’ hand there. His touch had been so warm, so gentle, so very nearly _loving_. The roughness of his hard-worked skin had rasped so beautifully against the ridge of that scar and for a wondrous instant it had seemed like Sirius’ touch could wipe away all the pain and rejection there, could erase all of the loneliness that had resulted from Remus’ refusal to harm another human.

And thank _goodness_ that his thoughts had fanned out so from that simple touch, or he might not have remembered himself, and Sirius right now would not be drawing breath. The thought sliced sharply through Remus, keener and more piercing than the wound that had become the scar. He had nearly given in, nearly _done it_ , nearly lost himself to his basest instincts and let the beautiful human pay the unfair price. Sirius’ harsh watery coughs resounded in Remus’ head, his would-be death spilling past the sly, luscious lips that had pressed with such eager, yielding sweetness to Remus’ kiss. Remus tried to focus on the faint sounds of the river, to let the rushing and splashing drown out the memory of those awful, hacking coughs and of the frightened racing sound of Sirius’ heart as he bravely lied.

Once he had honed in on the river sounds, however, Remus discovered something unusual in their pattern. There was something frantic somewhere in the water, something splashing in the staccato clumsiness of a land-thing. Remus entertained the thought of leaving it alone, of simply curling deeper into his own agony and remaining hidden until the demanding moon had waned… But he could not. It might be something in danger, and he was _trying_ to be good. He may have failed Sirius, but that did not mean he needed to give himself over to the badness of his natural.

For the first time in a great many hours, Remus moved, many of his joints popping faintly as he unfurled his long body from its tight-wound spiral. He could feel silty soil run from his body as he pushed away from the roots that had embraced his hidden form. Having emerged, he could hear the splashing more clearly, but could not say with any certainty if it was closer than it had first been. Remus steeled himself, jaw set, clinging to his determination to do good and swam in the direction of the sound.

The sun had gone down, but it was easy for Remus’ sharp eyes to locate the source of the splashing as he drew nearer and his heart lurched. _Legs_ , human legs. For the briefest instant he feared that someone was drowning and he was to be their unlikely savior, but as he approached he saw that the human was not thrashing in desperation… but inexplicably _stomping_. They stood in the water, submerged not quite to their hips. Remus watched for an uncomprehending moment before his curiosity got the better of him and he broke the surface of the water.

At once he wished he hadn’t.

“There you are!” James exclaimed, throwing up his hands and ceasing his stamping, “I walked all bloody day, my legs are _too weary_ for this!”

“Too weary for…?” Remus blinked in confusion, drawing himself uncertainly down so that the water covered his chin but unable to resist asking, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get your attention, of course!” James shot back testily, “What did it look like I was doing?” Remus genuinely had no answer to that question and thus remained silent, wondering if it would not be safer to simply slip back into the protection of the water and let the clear-water current carry him back to the deep, deep salt-sea. Before he could, James spoke again, “I have your attention now so you would be wise to start talking.”

Remus frowned guiltily, his heart sinking even further, deep into the pit of his stomach, “Sirius, he…” James crossed his arms over his broad chest, squinting at Remus in the dark in a way that was a bit myopic but nevertheless intimidating, “Is he well?” Remus asked, his heart aching with the need to know that the beautiful human remained unharmed.

“ _Well_?” James laughed darkly, “No, he’s not bloody _well!”_

Concern for his own well-being forgotten, Remus rose head and shoulders out of the water, slipping eagerly nearer to where James waded, “James, what is unwell with him?”

James swore with a sailor’s fluency and dropped into a crouch, unfazed by the water, pointing an accusing finger at the tip of Remus’ nose, “You _know_ what’s wrong, do you not?” Remus shuddered with a cringe that gave him away. James’ demeanor softened slightly and his hand lowered, “All he would say was that you had gone.”

A disbelieving scoff escaped Remus’ lips, “I should have remained gone,” he muttered, an admonishment to the foolhardy hope that crackled in his moon-drunk veins at the thought of Sirius protecting him, “Farewell, James.”

He’d hardly turned from the human before a large hand shot out and grabbed him firmly ‘round the upper arm, “Not so hasty!” Remus looked from James’ hand, very dark against the paleness of his own skin, to James’ face. His brow was furrowed with resolve above earnest eyes, “I know you hurt him,” James said and Remus’ heart skittered faster in his chest. He tugged against James’ hold, and James amended, “Or mayhaps he hurt you,” Remus stilled, trying to calm his speeding heart. James went on solemnly, “Neither he nor you seem mighty eager to tell me the way of it. And the truth of it is, Remus, I don’t care too dearly _what_ it was that happened.”

“You seem to care,” Remus said, tugging his arm again to draw James’ attention to the hand he still had wrapped none-too-gently around his bicep.

James loosened his grip but did not release Remus, “Marauders share a bond of _kinship_ , Remus,” James said gravely, “It may not sound like much to you, for all I know it may be that merfolk don't honor the bonds of friendship, but among humans, especially sailors, that covenant is _sacred_. Marauders don’t walk away,” he faltered, “Er, or _swim_ away. Least of all if their fellow Marauder is _hurt_.”

Every word James spoke plucked at Remus’ heart with guilt. He had felt the shame over his nature and self-hatred for hurting Sirius, but this… had it truly been so long since Remus had had a friend that he had forgotten how it was done? As they had rafted along the clear-water, Remus had basked in the warm comradery offered by his human companions. And perhaps he did not owe them anything; after all, he had given them a great deal of help already. It was not about owing, though, it was not a matter of _debt._ James spoke the truth; it was a matter of friendship.

“I make a poor Marauder,” Remus admitted, sagging, no longer caring to free himself from James’ grip. He could have gotten away if he’d wanted to, anyway, but his desire to be near the humans had won out as it seemed always to do.

“You’ll have only to work a little harder at it,” James said encouragingly, his hand opening to clap Remus on the shoulder.

“I don’t, I _cannot—_ ” Remus stammered out, “I am not—”

“He’s going to drive us mad with his sighing,” James bemoaned, running a hand through his unruly hair.

“What?” Remus asked, thrown by the shift in focus.

“Sirius,” James said, impatiently, “He’s moping about like a maid with her heart broken, and,” here James raised his eyebrows meaningfully, “If that’s as near to the truth as I suspect, I pray you have the mercy to give him at least the apology or forgiveness a friend deserves.”

“It is not so _simple_ ,” Remus exclaimed, frustration coloring his voice even as he felt well abashed by James’ words, “James, I’m _dangerous!_ I cannot bear to see him harmed!”

James lightly thumped the side of Remus’ head, “Then I’d see to it you do him no harm.”

The words hung between them, heavy with meaning, for a long moment. Surely he could control himself long enough to give Sirius the apology he deserved, as James bade him do! Even with the bright weight of the moon tugging him so from where it waited just beyond the horizon… Sirius deserved so much better than an apology, so much better than _Remus_. He deserved friendship, and love, and to be kissed often without it posing any danger to him. But a meager apology would have to suffice.

“Where is he?” he asked James, with a distinct feeling of giving in to the undertow.

James clapped him on the shoulder again and finally smiled. It had seemed wrong to see James’ face go so long without his trademark grin, “We’ve the raft tethered down there, the daft sod’s wandered off a bit further that way on account of his need to sigh and mope in solitude.”

“I shall offer him an apology,” Remus said gingerly, “But after that, it may be best that I return to the ocean.”

The smile weakened but James nodded manfully, “I hope you’re wrong, mate. I’d hate to see you go, for my part.”

Remus offered him a sad smile of his own, more moved by the friendly sentiment than he had words to express. He saluted as he had seen James do, and dove back under the water to swim the way that James had indicated. It did not take long before he spied the bottom of the bobbing raft and detected the warm glow of the campfire near which Peter would surely have been found. When he was a short distance past it, he broke the surface again and swam on in that fashion, keeping an eye to the shore. He was beginning to wonder if he had missed Sirius, swam by him, when he reached him. He was further than Remus had expected him to be from their camp. He very nearly missed him, lying on his back upon the ground as he was. James, as it turned out, had not been exaggerating, for it was a heavy, wistful sigh that alerted him to Sirius’ location.

It had only been the previous day that Remus had fled from Sirius’ company, but his heart leapt with relief to have found him again, as if they had been apart for the span of a year. In an instant, he was at the riverbank, hands curling into the soft green moss, yearning closer to the beautiful human and wondering if this indeed had been a bad idea. Sirius’ hair was messy and dark against the grass and soil, his much-stained shirt and his golden skin seeming bright against all the dim. His hands covered his face and a small pathetic sound escaped from beneath them. Remus had been weakly entertaining the idea of swimming away again, but he could not. He doubted very much that there was any force in existence that could have dragged him away from the beautiful human just then, when all his small woundedness was fresh in the night and Remus may hold the key to ease some of its ache.

He licked his lips and said as gently as he could, “Sirius.”

Sirius jumped violently, sitting up and kicking, whirling to look at the water and blinking several times as he tried to find Remus’ shape in the darkness, “Remus? Remus, you’re there?”

“I am,” Remus assured, hating himself a bit for the frantic doubt in Sirius’ voice and for the knowledge that he would soon be swimming away from the human again.

“I’m sorry!” Sirius gasped out in a rush, scrambling closer to the water only to hesitate uncertainly, opting to leave some distance between them as he dropped to his knees, “I’m sorry, Remus!” he said, stumbling over the speed of his words, “I’ve been going over and over it in my head, and I know not exactly what I’ve done, but I—”

“No, no, Sirius,” Remus soothed, the desperation in the human’s voice gnawed at him to hear, “Please, you have no cause to be sorry.”

“You left in such haste,” Sirius said, and Remus wanted to reach up and grab his hands to keep them from tugging so unkindly at his hair, “You _left_ and I know not how, how we— how _that_ even _happened_ , but I, I made allusion to my… my p-perversion but I never, you—”

“There is no perversion,” Remus said, absolutely confident in the truth of it and hoping despite all that had transpired, Sirius would truly hear him, “The way you are, the things you want, desiring other men, there is no perversion in it. I promise you, Sirius, I swear it.”

Sirius’ shoulders slumped with a mirthless laugh, “But you don’t share the desire, I understand. I _am_ sorry, Remus, I never should have kissed you without troubling even to tell you that I… h-how drawn to you I am…”

“Sirius,” Remus smiled. Despite everything, he couldn’t help but find it _cute_ that Sirius thought it had been a _surprise_. He had been hesitant to believe that the beautiful human could desire him, but there had been no lack of signals that he did. To point that out would only embarrass him, though, so he pointed out instead, “‘Twas I that kissed you.”

Even in the darkness, Sirius’ eyes found his and Remus had to bite down hard against the moon, urging him as it was to drag the human into the water with him and kiss him again, “You did,” Sirius sighed, this time in deep relief, “I-I _thought_ you had, but it didn’t make any sense, I…” he cocked his head, “Why did you…? What was—?”

“Sirius, I came only to tell you I’m sorry,” Remus ground out, through clenched jaws, fighting the desire for Sirius that had come surging up in him dangerously.

“You’re _leaving_ again?!” Sirius spat out, heartsickness bleeding into anger in his voice.

Remus shut his eyes, willing himself to calm, gritting out, “It would not be wise for me to remain,”

“Remus, _don’t_ ,” Sirius’ emotion was plain in his voice and Remus jolted when Sirius’ warm, rough hand covered his, squeezing hard, “Don’t you _dare!_ Please! I’ve never—”

“I can’t be the first,” Remus interrupted in disbelief, a heady combination of flattery, guilt, astonishment, and desire flooding him. He should pull his hand from Sirius. He should, _he really should_.

“Th-there was one other,” Sirius said, and a weariness beyond his years tinged every word, dampening the temper that had sparked there, “But he was not like you.”

“...it seems most unlikely he would be,” Remus couldn’t help mentioning, though it sounded foolish to him out loud.

Sirius gave an unhappy laugh, “That is true. But I mean to say, the way I felt,” his rough thumb stroked along the back of Remus’ hand, “It was different.”

“You sorrow for him,” Remus observed, not a question because the truth of it was apparent.

“My parents discovered us,” Sirius confided, and Remus wondered if this was the origin of the hurt that had troubled Sirius’ dreams, “I d-don’t know what became of him, but I have never known their punishments to be lenient…” Remus opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Sirius was blurting out more and pulling back his hand. Remus’ own felt cold and naked without it, “I-I should have left him be. He would have been better off if we had never m-met, and no doubt, you’re the same. I—Remus, if you’d sooner _go_ , I won’t stop you. You’re wise to do it, you’re so _good_ and I’m just—”

“No, no, no,” Remus couldn’t listen to this, and what’s more, he wouldn’t allow Sirius to labor under such an erroneous misunderstanding, “I’m _not_ , Sirius, I’m not good. I’m not what you think at all.”

~~~

“Not what I think?” Sirius repeated, wishing desperately that he could see the merman better in the darkness, wishing he could read the expression on his face rather than just dimly being able to make out the position of his features on his head. He laughed in frustration and overwhelm, “I hardly know what it is I think, Remus!”

“I’m a _siren_ , Sirius,” Remus said, with a quiet gravity to his voice, as if it were some grand revelation.

“I _know_ that, _Remus_ ,” he responded snidely, irritation getting the better of him as it nearly had a moment before. What the hell was Remus _getting at?_

“No, you don’t,” Remus insisted gravely, “You must _listen_. Siren is not merely another word for merperson,” Sirius’ attention snagged on that distinction, and the ragged way that Remus delivered it.

“It isn’t?” he asked, sitting back on his heels.

“No indeed,” Remus said grimly, “I know not what tales of merfolk your humans have told you, but the… if your knowledge of merfolk is limited to, to th-the song you sang us, you know nothing of sirens.”

“I’m a _sailor,_ Remus,” Sirius rolled his eyes, affronted by the prospect, “There’s no _end_ to the tales I’ve heard of merfolk. That they can turn into dolphins and fish, that they wear little caps that if stolen indenture them to the keeper, that they hatch from eggs, that they sink ships on purpose, that their singing could ensnare any human, that—”

“Those last two,” Remus interrupted flatly, “Those are specific to sirens.”

“Sinking ships… and singing…?” he sensed from the vague blur of Remus’ features that he had nodded, but it hardly mattered. His thoughts had grown sharp, twisting inward at the question and an answer surely too awful to be true. But he must know, “ _The Marauder_ ,” he asked, feeling a pang of longing still for the ship that had been home, “Our ship, Remus, did you sink our _ship_?”

“W-what? Of course, not!” Remus sounded truly shocked, “It was the work of that storm!”

Perhaps he ought to have more skepticism, but Sirius believed Remus was being truthful, “You’ve caused other ships to sink, though, yes?”

“Yes,” Remus’ voice was hollow.

“By… singing?”

“Yes,” Remus’ voice was lower still, “I… I renounced that life long ago now, but… yes.”

Something clicked into place, “Your parents,” Sirius said, “Your scar—?”

“Yes,” Remus confirmed again.

Silence fell between them for a moment as Sirius tried to puzzle the snatches of information he had into a form that made sense, “Remus, I understand not,” he finally admitted.

“ _I’m not good_ ,” Remus said, and Sirius was practically knocked back by the loathing in his voice, “I’m a _monster_ , Sirius, that’s what sirens _are!_ We’re made to _trick_ people, to lead them astray, to hurt them, and _kill them!”_ he gave a dry laugh, entirely void of humor, like a swift gust of wind, “We have this _yearning_ — _I have it_ , Sirius! — to seduce humans into the water with song and _drown_ them and _eat_ them!” There was a soft splash and Sirius did not know if it was Remus withdrawing or coming closer, “I found myself sorry for the humans and I refused to hurt another and my people cast me out, and-and I don’t _want to,_ but, Sirius, that yearning, it’s in my _blood_ , it’s in my _soul_ maybe, if I have one! And it’s _worse_ around humans, and it’s _worse_ when the moon is full and the tides are strongest, and I _really should go_ because it _hurts_ not to sing right now, but, Sirius, I c-can’t risk you! I won’t, I can’t!”

“That’s what happened yesterday, isn’t it?” Sirius said, the hair at his nape prickling with the memory of that indescribably divine sound that had streamed from Remus’ mouth into his and seemed to tangle around his heart and his brain. _Siren song_.

“Y-yes,” Remus hissed out.

“You are mistaken, though, Remus,” Sirius said, more certain of it than he’d ever been of anything in his entire life, “You’re not bad, and you’re no monster.”

“Sirius, the things I’ve _done_ ,” Remus practically whined and even the sound of that was peculiarly melodic, a minor chord that Sirius felt like a finger trailing down his spine.

“You _chose_ goodness, Remus!” Sirius said breathlessly, “You chose to stop doing harm and, and since I’ve met you I’ve seen you do _good_! You’re kind, and generous, and your actions represent themselves!”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m _kind,_ ” Remus said, his voice staccato and stilted in a fight against the melodiousness that slipped into every other word hypnotically, “I’m a monster by the nature of the very blood in my veins!”

“As am I!” Sirius countered sharply, trying not to allow his thoughts to linger on all the injustice of the people who had brought him into the world, “Blood governs us not half so much as the contents of your head, of your _heart_. We all have good and bad within us! What matters is the part we choose to act on! _That’s_ who we really are!”

“I make every effort to no more _act on it_ ,” Remus said desperately, his voice coming out more than halfway to a tragic tune, tugging Sirius nearer to the water’s edge, surprised when he found himself so close that he felt the flutter of Remus’ breath on his face as he confessed in helpless musicality, “But be not mistaken, I _do still want._ ”

The words poured heat into Sirius’ body and his hand found Remus’ jaw as if it had been made to fit there, “Wanting is no crime,” he absolved breathlessly, before his lips finally returned to where they so yearned to be, pressed to the impossible softness of Remus’.

Kissing Remus was everything. The merman’s hands braced against the earth, allowing him the leverage to press nearer to Sirius, who opened graciously to the silken ecstasy of Remus’ tongue. Sirius could feel Remus trembling, and realized by some intuition that he was fighting to remain silent. Sirius’ free hand lifted from his lap to stroke the wet cascade of Remus’ hair out of his face and behind his shoulder, in a bid to soothe him. A warbling whimper escaped Remus at the touch, melting Sirius’ ribs around his heart, or so it felt.

It was over suddenly, and much too soon by Sirius’ estimation, as Remus tore himself back and away from Sirius. The moon was just under the horizon, its pale light beginning to stain the sky and making Remus a bit more visible to Sirius than he had been only moments before, his expression wrecked with self-blame, “No,” he said, and Sirius was unsure whether he was addressing himself, “Not again. No.”

“Remus,” he entreated, conflicted between the shock and mortal terror of the day before and the achingly tender need to be close to Remus once again, “Stay, please.”

“Sirius, _I can’t_ ,” he bemoaned and Sirius thought, though it may have been wishful thinking, that the idea of separation might be as painful to Remus as it was to him, “I _want you_ , do you not understand? I want you so terribly that I know I shall lose control, and _I refuse to hurt you!_ The moon—”

A realization began to crystallize in Sirius’ mind and he spoke, trying to ignore the pleasurable squirming in his belly at Remus’ admission of _wanting_ him, “Remus… is it a yearning to _drown me_ , or… or would my drowning be a misfortunate, incidental outcome of my being unable to breathe underwater?”

“Misfortunate inciden— _what do you mean_?!” Remus demanded, clearly aghast at the blasé tone Sirius took in describing his own endangerment.

“You want to be near me,” Sirius said breathlessly, “And I want to be near you,” a barely-audible whine slipped from Remus at this, “If I could breathe underwater, would the danger be lifted, or is the allure in the drowning itself?”

Remus shuddered, the first moonlight glancing off his water-dotted skin, “Th-the _allure_ is not in the drowning,” he admitted but then his tone grew hopeless and he drew a bit further back into the river, “But what does that matter, Sirius? You can _not_ breathe underwater and I—”

“C-could I, though?” Sirius asked, his voice gaining strength as he got to his point, “The day we met you claimed that you could give me a tail like your own. Could you not instead give me gills or, or whatever it takes to breathe as you do?”

“I…” Remus began but then lapsed into silence, his frown dimly visible in the low light.

“You said it idly, then,” Sirius said, the optimism slackening in his voice, “Your magics cannot—”

“No,” Remus interrupted, “I did not say it idly. I… I believe I could do what you say, but I…” his eyes found their way back to Sirius’ and in the slow-brightening moonlight they were nearly too beautiful to behold, “I have never done this,” Remus said, his voice grown soft as a breeze amidst the river reeds, “I could hurt you.”

“I trust you,” Sirius said, at once, the truth of it surprising him as much as it seemed to surprise Remus.

“You are a fool,” Remus said, his tone wavering between humor and devastation.

“You are hardly the first to call me so,” Sirius conceded, but there was conviction in his realization of the trust he had in Remus, “And perhaps it is true. But fool or no, I trust you, Remus.”

“I nearly killed you,” Remus lamented, the words trying desperately to slide into that entrancing musicality.

“There is much to be said for that word, _‘nearly’_ ,” Sirius pointed out, but willed himself to sincerity before saying disappointedly, “If you will not attempt it, I understand. The choice is yours.”

Remus regarded him for a long moment, the tense lines of his face becoming gradually clearer as the moon started its climb past the horizon. Sirius began to wonder if the silence was to be Remus’ answer, an implied refusal, but then Remus heaved a sigh and glided slowly nearer to the river’s edge and to Sirius. He looked up at him, great golden-green eyes bottomless with longing and said softly, “I will attempt it. I…” he swallowed, sensitive brows drawing together as he swore seriously, “I will let no harm come to you, Sirius.”

“I know,” Sirius declared softly. Remus’ lips curled almost imperceptibly at the corners. Sirius needed no further invitation than that; he stood and doffed his clothes, his heart fluttering against his ribs as he slipped into the cool water wearing only his drawers.

Remus’ nostrils flared visibly at the new proximity, his eyes flashing over Sirius’ exposed skin before he shut them. He sucked in a deep breath between his teeth and opened his eyes again, the seashell-pink lids lifting slowly. Sirius ached to kiss him again, to smooth the lines of tension from his brow with his lips, to taste again the blissful quenching sweetness of his mouth. He restrained himself by some miracle of will, and remained still as Remus reached out to him, his shallow breath catching as Remus’ hands made contact with his skin.

Sirius’ breath caught in his chest as one of Remus’ palms flattened, smooth and warm, against the center of his chest, his eyes falling shut as the fingers of his other hand skated across the line of his jaw. For a moment, there was only the cool of the water and the warm silk of Remus’ hands, and then he felt it. That nudging touch of Remus’ magic against him, a cautious yet curious press. Sirius welcomed it this time, and did not perceive it to be invasive as he had in the past. He vaguely registered a gasp falling from his mouth at the closeness of Remus, the tendrils of magic somehow seeming to taste and smell of him, to feel silk-smooth as his skin as they wove throughout the fibers of Sirius’ very sinews. He felt peculiarly exposed, an odd imbalance similar to nausea churning behind his sternum as Remus’ fingers traveled the line of his jaw to his chin. When the smooth tips of his fingers fluttered across Sirius’ lips, he did not hesitate to kiss them. He felt them quiver against his mouth before moving up along the bridge of his nose, leaving a tightly tingling sensation in their wake that made Sirius fear for an instant that he would sneeze violently in Remus’ face.

The nausea-like feeling in Sirius’ chest peaked in such a way that he twitched slightly with the almost-pain of it, and then, quite suddenly it seemed to settle. There was a sensation of sliding into place, and the discomfort vanished. Remus’ fingers brushed ever-so-gently across the fan of Sirius’ left eyelashes and thus urged, he opened his eyes, a little surprised that he had shut them. Sirius thought for a second that perhaps Remus had improved his eyesight, but realized that it was just that the moon had crawled a bit higher in its arc whilst his eyes were shut. Remus’ face very subtly betrayed his worry, and eager to dispel it, Sirius splashed into the water, so that his nose and mouth were submerged.

He knew at once that it had worked, as the water that poured into his nostrils did not sting or burn, but flowed no more uncomfortably than an inhale of chilly air. Sirius laughed in delight, bubbles emerging from his mouth and causing Remus’ brows to furrow deeper with uncertainty. Sirius grabbed the hand that still hovered by his face and tugged, pulling Remus into the water with him a bit gracelessly. As the water covered their heads, an astonished laugh escaped Remus in a ribbon of bubbles the instant before their lips found each other by mutual intent.

Remus did not stifle the musical hum that rose from his throat at the touch of Sirius’ lips. It went through Sirius sugar-sweet and close, amplified by the muffling press of water into his ears. Sirius whimpered at the softness of Remus’ body as their arms encircled each other, the delicate fan of Remus’ tail curling around Sirius calves in a way that tickled deliciously. Sirius drank the dewy sweetness of Remus eagerly, groaning in surprised pleasure as Remus’ fingers tangled into his hair. Their lips parted and Sirius opened his eyes to see the cause of the interruption, only to feel his brain fizz at the sight of Remus so close, the pale gold of him cast in silver-green ripples by the moonlight through the water. His expression was one of fond surprise and Sirius felt his cheeks burn hot when he realized it was a result of his reaction to Remus’ hands in his hair. Remus watched him with a look of tempted amazement as his fingertips delicately moved against the sensitivity of Sirius’ scalp, carding down with great care to comb the tangles from Sirius’ dirty hair without snagging. It was a different sort of magic, the way the simple tender touch eased Sirius into a deeper sense of safety than he’d ever before felt. He was content to trail his hands along the blessed smoothness of Remus’ skin and to gaze into his remarkable eyes as the watery world grew brighter around them and Remus patiently worked the knots and sand and salt from Sirius’ hair.

When the task was done, Remus ran his webbed fingers indulgently through the dark cloud of Sirius’ hair from root to tip a few times before kissing him again briefly until his grin got in the way of the kiss. Sirius had never seen so dazzling a smile on Remus’ face and he was sure he’d never see anything so beautiful. Remus took Sirius’ hand and when he began to swim, Sirius kicked his legs to follow without an instant’s hesitation.

As thrilling as it was, Sirius found himself uncommonly soothed by being underwater in such a way. With no urgency to return to the surface for air, he could appreciate the serene quiet and pressure and blue-greenness of it all. His attention seemed pulled in every direction as he swam hand-in-hand with Remus; the siren himself held the most of Sirius’ focus, of course, but he had competition from the frilled underwater plants that bent lazily in the pull of the stream, from the glinting fish that meandered weightlessly by, from the alluringly deep blue where the river was deepest.

Sirius’ hand felt drawn to an especially beautiful formation of tree roots, braided together beneath the water as if by some innate intelligence that no human aboveground would have suspected trees to have. It seemed like a significant epiphany, strangely, as he ran his fingers down the elegantly entwined roots and Sirius turned to Remus to comment on it, foolishly surprised when the words came out in a garble of rippling water. Remus grinned again, so beautifully, to see the expression of dumbfounded annoyance that Sirius knew he wore. He forgot soon enough, when Remus’ tail looped around the back of his knees and drew him close enough to kiss.

Some of the serenity of the moonlit underwater world evaporated in the wake of the renewed heat of this kiss. Remus’ lips were not tentative against his, but eager as they had been the night before, his hands curling around Sirius’ waist. The heat of desire simmered through Sirius with an intensity he’d never felt and he was pulling Remus flush against him, his legs wrapping around Remus’ tail of their own volition. He did not worry about his erection pressing against Remus’ scales, finding with unflinching comfort that he felt no need to hide or dissemble with the siren who he felt already knew him inside as surely as out. The heat of desire seemed to flow between them, traded back and forth along their dancing tongues, mingling with the shimmering sound of Remus’ voice, their want and their entirety curling around each other just as brilliantly as the roots of the riverside trees, tangling magnificently in their innate thirst.

The river carried them and it mattered not where it took them. All that mattered was their nearness to each other, the honeyed, eager tangling of their bodies. Remus’ song was entrancingly beautiful, and Sirius could well imagine it sinking ships, though he felt, however paradoxically, lifted by it, even the heaviest corners of his soul buoyed by it. There could be no perversion in this, it occurred to him powerfully, unorthodox and inexplicable as it may be. There could be no true perversion in such beauty and givingness, and the certainty of that felt like liberation, like indulgence, like the forgiveness he had not known he was craving. Remus’ lips left his only to press with hungry sweetness along his jaw and throat, the touch so intimate it was hardly as if the kiss had ended at all, _“I love you_ ,” Sirius professed into the silencing flow of the water, the words swept away from him on the current before his own meaning reached him.

Remus parted with seeming reluctance from his lavish exploration of Sirius’ clavicle, cocking his head at Sirius in nonverbal curiosity. Sirius felt turned upside-down by the ease with which the words had tumbled from his lips before even they had had the chance to coalesce in his brain. Now that he’d said them, there was no denying their veracity, and in the unreality of being underwater it seemed to make an odd kind of sense that they be true. After all, how could he _not_ love the beautiful creature gazing at him in caring perturbation, taking his hands so gentle yet strong, and tugging him towards the bright silver illumination of the surface.

Sirius was surprised when the night air hit his face, cool against his wet skin. Remus’ fingers gently combed Sirius’ hair back from his face. They were nose to nose and a gasp halfway to a sob surprised Sirius as it spilled from his mouth, overwhelmed suddenly by the tenderness and closeness of the man who tangled warmly around him, “Are you well?” Remus asked, his voice low and concerned as the impossible smoothness of his hand glided along Sirius’ cheek.

Sirius nodded, darting forward to kiss the corner of Remus’ mouth, before saying honestly, “I have never been so well.”

“Spoke you something to me?” Remus asked, nuzzling his nose softly against Sirius’ as he did, “Below the water?”

Sirius’ heart leapt in his chest at being caught in his accidental admission of love; as easily as the words had come in the dreamy blue quiet of the river, Sirius was not ready to have them be heard in the naked air. In lieu of the direct answer he found himself unprepared to give, he took Remus’ face between his hands and kissed him soundly on the mouth. Remus made a darling little _mmph_ of surprise before he was returning the kiss spiritedly.

~~~

Remus was a fool, that was the only explanation. He was a damned fool, his own blindness to blame for his damnation. Even the sweet satisfaction of Sirius’ lips against his own couldn’t quiet Remus’ scolding thoughts. How had he overlooked the ingenious simplicity of merely giving a human the capacity to breathe underwater? It was so obvious that he had overlooked it entirely, and his heart ached remorsefully for the humans who had long ago paid the price of his foolishness.

Sirius’ legs tangled more snugly around Remus’ tail and the urgent press of his groin rather suddenly took precedence over the rest of Remus’ thoughts. The garment Sirius wore still was only some thin, white fabric and it did nothing to conceal the hard heat of Sirius’ cock. A frisson of need cascaded through Remus, his own arousal fierce. Sirius’ tongue swept against Remus’ in the same rhythm as his rotating hips, making Remus’ head spin so that his hands took hold of Sirius’ hips. Once there, he didn’t know if he’d meant to hold him still and stop Sirius’ mind-addling grinding, or to pull him closer. As it turned out, his hands had a mind of their own, one gripping tight onto Sirius’ hip, thumb pressed flat into the soft sensitivity below his navel, while the other hand reached around to cradle and squeeze one supple cheek of the human’s arse.

Sirius moaned into Remus’ mouth at the touch, hugging him closer with arms and legs as if desperate to eliminate all distance between them. Hungry for more of Sirius’ hunger, hungry to hear the sweet music of that moan again, Remus kneaded the wet fabric clad flesh again, amazed by the soft strength of muscle. Sirius moaned again and grazed his teeth deliciously against Remus’ lip, so he repeated the action a third time. It was less careful and his eager fingers slipped in their haste, digging into the even greater heat in the cleft of Sirius’ arse. Sirius shuddered remarkably and it was Remus who whimpered, drawn so powerfully to the heated sensitive places tucked into the foreign shape of Sirius’ human body. An errant wish to feel what Sirius felt, to experience what made him moan and shudder, flitted through Remus’ mind, followed directly by the thought that he _could_. He could do just that.

It was Remus’ surprised laugh that interrupted their kiss, “What’s funny?” Sirius asked, words slurred slightly on his kiss-bruised lips.

Remus grinned despite himself as he took in the glaze of Sirius’ eyes, the redness of his lips, the way his hips had not quit their grinding against his tail, “Not funny,” he amended, pecking the corner of Sirius’ mouth, “I should think that this has been unfair.”

“Unfair?” Sirius repeated, head canting to one side and dark brows drawing together, “How do you mean?”

“Well,” Remus said, feeling gleefully sly as he tried not to grin too much, “You have allowed me the immense pleasure of having you below the water,” keeping one hand firmly on Sirius’ arse, Remus trailed the fingertips of the other along Sirius’ side and relished the way he shivered at the delicate touch, “But I have deprived you the pleasure of having me on land.”

Sirius swallowed loudly, his eyes growing round as they stared up into Remus’, “W-what mean you by this?” he asked, and his voice trembled.

It took every ounce of Remus’ will to release Sirius, to gently prise his legs from where they were slung around his tail, to put even a small distance between them. One of his hands entwined still with Sirius’ but they touched nowhere else. With his last shred of willpower, Remus closed his eyes. Sirius was too distractingly beautiful, at once innocently wide-eyed and sultry beyond fathoming. To do this Remus would need every shred of his focus, though, so he forced his thoughts away from Sirius’ beauty, his heat, his body. He thought instead about himself, _his_ body, mapping every scale and every tissue. For the first time, Remus was grateful for the fullness of the moon, pulling from its power and glutting his magic on its intensity. He held his breath and imagined himself to be composed of the dark riverbank mud and set to sculpting it into a new shape. He did not know how long he spent that way, teeth gritted tightly against the odd, itching tingle of change. At long last, he released his his held breath with a shudder and inhaled in a deep gulp. Sirius squeezed his hand and Remus found himself reluctant to open his eyes, worried that he might not be to Sirius’ liking like this, unsure what expression he would find on the young man’s face.

“R-Remus?” Sirius’ said, voice barely above a whisper, “A-are you well?”

The sweet concern in Sirius’ tone washed away Remus’ doubt. He opened his eyes and found Sirius peering at him and couldn’t help the smile that curved again across his lips. In lieu of answering Sirius’ question verbally, he closed the small distance between their bodies again. It felt utterly strange to push the water with this body, the land-balance of his limbs lacking the water-grace of his tail. But awkwardness of movement was worth it, so utterly worth it for the brand new sensation of tangling his legs with Sirius’, worth it solely for the gasp of astonishment and desire that escaped Sirius at the discovery of the change to Remus’ body, “ _Remus,”_ he said in breathless amazement, eyes falling shut at the brush of his still-hard cock against the new and unfamiliar one that rested soft at the juncture of Remus’ new thighs.

The touch was like a bolt of lightning and Remus buried a hand in Sirius’ hair and pulled him into a searing kiss. It was a bizarre and heady sensation, feeling his heart skip into a faster rhythm, blood rushing to engorge his cock. He had never given much thought to the experience of human anatomy and now it left him speechless. Sirius purred deliciously against his lips as Remus’ cock rapidly matched his in hardness, and shocked a guttural moan from Remus as with a slow thrust of his hips he dragged their lengths together, separated only by the thin fabric of Sirius’ garment. Sirius swore and dropped his forehead to Remus’ shoulder, releasing a heavy breath that dried cold along Remus’ wet collarbone. As if sensing it, Sirius kissed the very spot before asking in a soft, hoarse voice, “You said something about having you on land?”

“Mmm I did,” Remus confirmed in a hum, letting himself be pulled through the water towards land. They tumbled against the spongey dark earth clumsily and Sirius giggled before tugging Remus back down into an engulfing kiss. Remus had never been so grateful for soil as he was just then, grateful for the way it cradled their tangling embrace, grateful for the leverage it gave him to press closer still to the beautiful yielding strength of Sirius’ body. Remus mimicked the thrusting of Sirius’ hips, their twin gasps swallowed by each other at the sensuous slide of their bodies together, wet skin sticking and gliding as the water lapped still at their calves and feet, nearly nothing left between them. Nearly.

It was reluctantly that Remus lifted himself up from Sirius just enough to tug loose the drawstring at the man’s waist, Sirius’ hands joining his to push the offending fabric down his thighs. The moon was still on the rise, its glow seeming to grow brighter with every blessed instant of nearness to Sirius as if he was the real source of its light, and the silver light indeed seemed beautifully at home upon his flesh. It shone against the newly revealed skin with startling brilliance, revealing it not to be the dappled gold of the rest of his body, but as white nearly as the moon itself.

Remus’ fingers reverently brushed the pale perfection of Sirius’ hip and he whimpered, the wonderful sound inspiring Remus to keep his touch soft, dragging his fingertips along the damp dark curls before tracing delicately up the exquisite shaft, “ _Remus,_ ” Sirius panted, and as entrancing as the human’s cock was, Remus’ eyes were drawn back to his face. His eyes were wide and dark, his cheeks and lips flushed dark, the riverbank reeds casting swaying lines of shadow across him. Remus wanted to trace the line of each one with his tongue, wanted to know if the shadow tasted different than the light, if the sun-gold skin tasted different than the moon-pale. Of its own accord, his hand wrapped around the heat of Sirius’ cock, and he threw his head back and groaned. Remus darted forward to taste the reed-shadows upon Sirius’ throat, feeling the bob of his adam’s apple, the flutter of his pulse. And then Sirius’ chin was there and his nose was pressing Remus’ cheek, breathing in heavy gusts against his skin as his lips caught Remus’ in an exquisitely deep kiss.

Remus’ hand tightened around Sirius as they kissed but he found with a flicker of unease that he wasn’t sure what to do with his hand to ensure that Sirius felt only the best possible sensations. Perhaps sensing his uncertainty, or perhaps motivated purely by his own lust, an instant later Sirius’ hand slithered between their bodies and wrapped around Remus’ cock. A whine escaped Remus at the unfamiliar feeling of Sirius’ calloused fingers against his new and sensitive member, but Sirius’ touch was gentle as he slid his hand down to the base and up again. Remus broke the kiss but his lips remained pressed to Sirius’ as the man drew from him panting breaths and soft moans, “Merciful God, Remus,” Sirius whispered against Remus’ cheek, kissing the corner of his lips, “You are a marvel.”

“ _Sirius,_ ” was Remus’ eloquent reply, and he found he didn’t care a whit when the word emerged in song, lilting and ethereal. Sirius sighed at the sound and Remus was reminded that he held Sirius in his hand and experimentally he imitated Sirius’ touch, dragging the circle of his fingers from the base of Sirius’ cock to the tip. Sirius’ response was instantaneous, his hips meeting Remus’ touch and a moan falling from his mouth. Eager to hear it again, Remus repeated the motion and was rewarded. From there they fell into a rhythm, their hands and hips matching each other’s pace, songs and sighs mingling upon their dancing tongues. They curled around each other, the blood hot in their veins and the moon silvering their edges, and it occurred to Remus as pleasure coiled tightly within his core and sweat glittered on Sirius’ rapture-creased brow that odd though it might be, he had never felt anything more natural or more primal or more ecstatic than this.

Sirius gasped out his name, his body going rigid and quivering in the instant before he pulsed in Remus’ hand and sacred warmth spilled from him. His hand around Remus tightened spasmodically and that and the expression of bliss on Sirius’ face was all it took for Remus to follow, climax rippling through him in an exquisite release that was both very similar and very different from the experience in his natural body. For a few seconds, they trembled together, eyes shut in the receding of ecstasy. When Remus opened his eyes, Sirius was gazing at him already, a smile spreading across his face to have his gaze met. They kissed sweetly and as they parted, Sirius laughed softly.

Remus hummed curiously, not trusting himself yet with words, sure that if he tried to speak his tongue would insist on confessing to Sirius the love that he felt in every fiber of his being. Understanding the nonverbal question, Sirius shrugged one shoulder, “I am a bit giddy,” he admitted, before untangling himself from Remus enough to stretch out beside him.

Remus grinned, mirroring Sirius and stretching out the peculiarity of his legs. He looked down at their bodies for a moment and when he trusted himself to speak, he said, “In truth you are not a little human, are you?”

Sirius glanced down at their legs, his own extending a significant bit longer than Remus’, “I am not,” he conceded, but when he met Remus’ eyes again his gaze was soft, “But I rather like it, all the same.”

Remus felt his cheeks grow hot and wondered how something as simple as that could make him blush after what they had just done. He suspected it might have little to do with the name, and everything to do with the love that for now remained unspoken, “I rather like it, too,” he admitted quietly. The moon floated directly above them and for a long moment they lay in silence, gazing at each other and listening to the soft sounds of the sleepy river. Quite suddenly, the serenity was disturbed by a wave of light-headedness that was nearly pain, making Remus cry out.

“Remus?” Sirius inquired, concern apparent in his voice.

“I must change back,” Remus said, the words coming out apologetic.

Sirius swore, “Well, go on, then!” he said impatiently.

Remus opened one eye, having shut them against the discomfort, and peered at Sirius’ stricken face, “You…” he said, “You will not be troubled? When I am as nature made me again?”

“Be not a fool,” Sirius said, but his voice and his touch were gentle as he cupped Remus cheek, “Nature made you perfect, Remus.” The words made Remus’ heart feel as though it might float out of his chest, but another wave of discomfort shuddered through him and this time he surrendered to it, allowing his body to slide back into its original form. The shift was graceful enough, but as Sirius drew him into his arms, Remus found that he was shaking. He felt drained of his magic, and in fact, it was a certain thing that he had never drawn so deeply from that well as he had tonight. They lay in silence for a long time, long after the quaking of Remus’ body had stopped, Sirius’ chest rising and falling in a soothing tide beneath his cheek. He had thought the human asleep for a while, moon sinking low to the earth and the sun beginning to bleed pink into the east when Sirius spoke, “James and Peter reached Godric’s Cove by foot yesterday,” he said, and there was something cautious in his tone as he added, “James reckons we might remain there for a time.”

Remus turned the words over in his weary head for a moment before asking gingerly, “Intends he not to replace your ship?

“I reckon he did at first,” Sirius said and Remus could hear the slant of a smile in his tone as he added, “But by the way he spoke of the girl at the inn all day, he is not in haste to leave this place.”

Remus couldn’t help but smile at that, “Oh?” he asked, sitting up slightly to rest his chin on Sirius sternum, looking up at him.

“ _‘Never seen such a beauty, chaps,’_ ” he gushed, in an impeccable imitation of James, “‘ _Tongue sharp as a sword, let me tell you, and twice as quick, and you know I fancy a lady who speaks her mind! Oh and with eyes like emeralds, I’m telling you, the most precious bloody emeralds in the world, and hair like blazing fire and that’s just_ above _the neck, men, because I’m a gentleman, but_ blimey!’”

Remus laughed, but unsure of how to respond, he rested his cheek upon Sirius’ chest again and silence fell over them once again. He had never allowed himself to think of knowing Sirius as more than a temporary gift, and he was reluctant to allow himself to, when doing so would make his departure only that much more painful, “And…” he said at last, needing to ask no matter how much he feared the answer, “...If James should tire of the inn girl, if he should find another ship… what shall you do then?”

“ _Then_ ,” Sirius said, a smile in his voice, “I shall pick you up and place you at the ship’s bow, where you shall look so preposterously fetching that every last sailor upon the seven seas shall envy and be ashamed of their ships with their dull figureheads made of boring old _wood_.”

Sirius’ words had another laugh bursting out of Remus, surprised and delighted by the words, comforted by the reassurance couched amidst the joking and the flattery, reassurance that Sirius meant for them to remain together. Perhaps, Remus allowed himself to think for the first time, perhaps this would be more than a temporary crossing of fates. Instead of saying that, however, he merely sat up to look down at Sirius, gorgeous in the dawning, and admonished fondly, “You are a fool, little human.”

“But I am _your_ fool, little fish,” Sirius returned with a smile, before his expression gave way to something a little less certain, “If…” he added, “If that please you?”

Remus leant down and planted a gentle kiss on the uncertain curve of Sirius’ lips, assuring him honestly, “Nothing on land or sea could please me more,” and drawing him into a hug.

It was with considerable worry that James and Peter searched for their fellow Marauder come morning. James chastised himself internally for sending the merman to his friend, fearing that he had unknowingly sent him to some dreadful fate. Their worry was for naught, as it turned out. The two sailors traded knowing smirks upon finding Sirius at last, sound sound asleep with Remus and tangled together in debauched undress in the shallow waters of the river’s edge. James rather thought that they were an unlikely picture of domestic young-love bliss, but his hopelessly romantic streak was not enough to deter him from disturbing their rest and waking them with a mighty splash.

_~~The End~~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to know what you thought in the comments!!


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